Tag: Lee Peoples

The Devil Wears Prada – Author Lauren Weisberger

The Devil Wears Prada
Lauren Weisberger

Make a pact with the devil; you lose!  Too late to save her relationship with her boyfriend, Andrea learns this hard lesson.  The devil wears Prada!  Amanda Priestly, editor in chief of Runway, a world famous fashion magazine based in New York, is the boss from hell, the villain of Lauren Weisberger’s best selling novel, now a best selling movie, The Devil Wears Prada.

Andrea Sachs, twenty-three year-old heroine and right out of college, takes a job as assistant to the world famous Amanda Priestly for one year in hopes of the experience of this job—a job a million girls would die for—leading to a job writing for The New Yorker, her lifelong dream.   Her job requires her being on call literally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, leaving her no time for family and friends.  She spends her day, an average of fourteen hours each, running errands, fetching Starbucks, ordering one meal after another….  Never a hello or a thank you nor even deigning to look at Andrea, Amanda treats her worse than a slave.

After nearly a year of neglect, her boyfriend Alex can take no more of the broken dates, missed or unreturned phone calls, and neglect of family and friends.  Her best friend since eighth grade is Lily, who has no family but hers and needs her as her life spirals downward under the pressure of her doctorial program.  While Andrea is in Paris as Miranda’s lackey, Lily ends up in the hospital, badly injured in an automobile accident while driving under the influence—Alex, a very sensitive elementary school teacher, had tried to warn Andrea that her friend was drinking too much and needed her help.  Alex expects her home immediately, but Andrea cannot leave Miranda because she would be fired and miss out on the recommendation to The New Yorker Miranda has just promised her at the end of her year as Miranda’s assistant.  She is almost there, just one more month to go.

But Miranda’s worsening treatment of her makes her realize what is really important to her, and throwing caution to the wind, she returns home.  Having recognized the Stockholm Syndrome in Emily, another of Miranda’s assistants and Andrea’s overseer and trainer, she realized that like everyone else who worked for Miranda, she herself is beginning to show signs of that syndrome, where the victim identifies with his/her captor; for example, Emily, Miranda’s senior assistant, refuses to criticize her even when she has been so poorly treated she’s in tears.  It takes Miranda herself comparing Andrea to her when she was young to wake Andrea up.  Seeing herself thirty years later, lonely and unloved like Miranda is all she needs to try to get back her real self.

But is it too late, especially too late to save her relationship with her boyfriend?  Make a pact with the devil….  Did she lose Alex?  In spite of the hoped for ironic twist, I fear the inevitable. Yet what a great book!  I am glad that I chose to read it instead of seeing the movie.

Revieded by Lee L. Peoples

P.S.: More Good Reading Another Book Recommendation by Lee Peoples

P.S.: More Good Reading
Another Book Recommendation by Lee Peoples

Every Secret Crime
Doug M. Cummings

Every Secret Crime by Doug M. Cummings is a murder mystery set in Falcon Ridge, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. Local TV reporter Reno McCarthy sets out to solve the crime, having noticed early on that something is not quite right with the investigation. What he eventually discovers is that this crime is connected to the thirty-year-old unsolved murder of the wife of one of Falcon Ridge’s leading citizens.

The constant twists and turns the plot takes make for great suspense; and just as the reader thinks the crime is about to be solved, here comes another twist. The ending, however, is a disappointment. A prime player disappears and turns up later miles away in Topeka, Kansas, of course, in disguise. As this is Cummings’s second Reno McCarthy novel, I suppose this is fodder for a third. All in all, though, a great read!

By Lee Peoples

More Good Reading Book Recommendations

More Good Reading

Book Recommendations by Lee Peoples

Two other books I’ve recently enjoyed fall under the category of Christian fiction, as they have to do with miracles: River Rising by Athol Dickson and The Prodigy by Alton Gansky.

In River Rising , the hero, an ordained minister, is of course quite knowledgeable of the power he seemingly possesses and its source, while the young boy in The Prodigy is not even aware of anything special about the many miracles he works.

****************************

Slaves in 1927? You bet! In the hidden swamps of Louisiana, on the Mississippi River. River Rising by Athol Dickson is the suspenseful story of a black man’s search for his past.

Hale Poser, a Negro of mixed parentage, leaves the New Orleans orphanage where he grew up and later worked, and comes to the small town of Pilotville in Plaquemines parish, in search of his past. He had been brought up in the orphanage without any knowledge of a mother or father, or family of any kind. Finding an old piece of paper which he thinks might lead to some answers about who he is, he sets out for Pilotville, a town on stilts on the Mississippi River.

When he goes in search of a newborn baby recently kidnapped from the hospital where he had found work as a janitor, he stumbles upon a hidden cotton plantation, and he himself is taken captive. Slavery in 1927, right down to the evil slave master and the slaves’ management of their plight through the singing of the old Negro slave ! Hale is admonished not to teach the slaves English, but he miraculously and inexplicably speaks the patois of the slaves, the only language they know. And he knows all of their songs, also unexplainable. In direct contrast to the seeming peaceful coexistence of the blacks and the whites in Pilotville—although “separate but equal,” there are no Jim Crow laws here—the Negroes on the plantation are treated less than human. When the river rises, both the plantation and the town of Pilotville are endangered, and along with the receding of the water comes the unraveling of the mysteries of the town, the plantation, and the tragic hero Hale Poser.

Toby Matthews is the main character in The Prodigy by Alton Gansky. Born to a young unwed mother in 1996 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he is upon his birth known to be special. When he is six years old, he and his impoverished mother flee his abusive father and begin their drive to California. Toby comes to the attention of Richard Wellman, a talk show host at a radio station in Arizona, when people witnessing Toby’s miracles begin calling the station. He miraculously heals many sick people in a hospital his mother takes him to when the evil presence that plagues him causes the car door to slam on his hand, injuring him. Earlier on their drive west, he has stopped a deadly tornado, caught on film by two storm chasers. The video from the hospital and the storm chasers’ video are the proof that Wellman needs, and under the guise of helping him and his mother reach California, the radio host exploits them, and sets Toby up as a modern day evangelist, healing people. The richer Wellman becomes the more evil he becomes. Soon he is completely consumed by the evil presence that has plagued young Toby all of his life.

The two books are very similar in that in both are miraculous occurrences, but different in the sense that the young boy Toby inThe Prodigy has no understanding of miracles. Until he is introduced to Christianity and learns of the miracles Christ performed, he does not even believe he is doing anything. But Hale Poser, the tragic hero in River Rising , knows he is a prophet; and when he arrives at the plantation, Marah calls him Moses, as she sees him as the savior of his people, especially after the miracles he performs. Just how much he proves to be like the Moses of the Old Testament makes for interesting and suspenseful reading. And Toby is a Christ-like figure, having been observed as unique by his teenage mother and everyone else since birth. Another difference is in style. While The Prodigy is fast-moving, a veritable page-turner, River Rising is in contrast, slow-moving and sometimes difficult to follow, perhaps in imitation of the inability to explain some of the happenings in the story. However, you will find both great reads.

The Mermaid Chair – Author Sue Monk Kidd

The Mermaid Chair
Sue Monk Kidd

Reviewed by Lee Lemon Peoples

Jessie was nine years old when her father’s boat exploded, reportedly because of a leaking fuel line, ignited by a spark from the pipe she had given her father as a gift for Father’s Day. At forty-two years old, happily married with her only child, a daughter, now in college, Jessie experiences a feeling of restlessness, which she does not understand nor does she confront until she is called back home to take care of her mother. For some unknown reason, Nelle Dubois, her mother, has chopped off the index finger (the “pointing” finger) on her right hand. Returning to Egret Island, a tiny barrier island off the coast of South Carolina, where she grew up, she meets and falls in love with Brother Thomas, a Benedictine monk with conflicts of his own.

Sue Monk Kidd, the best-selling author of The Secret Life of Bees, has this novel, The Mermaid Chair, set in the winter and spring of 1988. A year later her main character, Jessie Sullivan, looks back on the incident in an attempt to bear it by telling about it: “They say you can bear anything if you can tell a story about it.”

I’ve always admired people who were willing to take chances and suffer the consequences, but never did I dream I’d admire a woman (or a man for that matter) for infidelity, nor did I ever dream I’d admire the husband his forgiveness of that wife’s infidelity. While this novel has elements of mythology and legend (the mermaid chair, Saint Senara, a former mermaid), it is about Christianity, more specifically, Catholicism.

When Jessie was a child, her father told her the story of mermaids living in the waters around the island. Their main job was to save humans, he said, and years later, she wonders if they didn’t save her. Never ever having done anything out of the ordinary, she, at forty-two years old “dove” into impropriety:

World Without End – Ken Follett

World Without End

Ken Follett

World Without End, Ken Follett’s sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, is a must-read. It is the continuing story of the Kingsbridge Priory and its continuing powerful political and religious influence in Kingsbridge, England, beginning in 1337, one hundred years after the end of the prequel.

One hundred years or so before, one of the greatest cathedral—and the central driving force of this historical novel—was built. It was the culminating dream of then Prior Philip and Tom and Jack Builder. Follett has created counterparts to these three main characters in this sequel in the persons of Godwyn, who becomes prior, and builders Merthyn (hero) and Elfrin (villain). Counterparts to other important characters are Caris, Gwenda, and Ralph. This is a must-read, especially if you enjoyed The Pillars of the Earth. Kingsbridge is a “world without end” in this well researched novel. Much of the plot is dominated and driven by the plague, which rages during this period in history. You will enjoy every page of this 1014-page novel, which I highly recommend.

Reviewed by Lee Peoples

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

David Wroblewski

If your requirement for a good book is that it ends happily, you will want to skip David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. However, if like me you savor good writing for the sake of good writing, great descriptions of the Wisconsin countryside in the 1970s, descriptions of its memorable characters, and beautiful, free-flowing writing, you won’t want to miss it. All of these things kept me reading and hoping to be in the end rewarded for my patience and dedication. Besides, Oprah said it was a great book, and it’s rare that I have disagreed with her.

This is the tragic story of Edgar Sawtelle, a young boy born without a voice but with a special gift and love for training dogs. He is the only child born to parents who before his birth had undergone the loss of a number of babies either through miscarriages or still birth. Perfect in every way, but without speech, he learns to communicate with sign, both with humans and the Sawtelle dogs, a fictional breed of dogs that has been in his family for three generations.

My requirement for a good book is not that it always ends happily (thus is life), but that it ends satisfactorily. That does not happen here. After we journey with Edgar in his coming-of-age story, we return with him to his home where everything literally goes up in smoke. Even the records of five generations of Sawtelle dogs go up in flames.

Edgar’s father dies suddenly and mysteriously; but supernaturally, he returns to his son and tells him he was murdered. He is charged to find the evidence because no one will believe him without it. In town he encounters a store owner with whom he has another supernatural experience. From her he learns what the evidence of his father’s murder is that he should look for. When he can no longer stand being at home around his mother who has now befriended his uncle, he begins sleeping in the barn. When another fatal accident occurs, he flees, taking three of the dogs from the litter he has birthed and trained with him. On his journey he encounters Henry, and when he leaves to return home, two of the three dogs choose to stay with Henry. He finds the evidence he has been looking for, but what good is evidence if no one knows about it? Not even his mother.

So when everything goes up in flames, the dog that returned home with Edgar leads the other dogs away in the direction of Henry’s place, we suspect, as that is not really clear.

We are left with so many questions. Perhaps Wroblewski planned it this way for a sequel. Don’t count on it. What was the point of a coming-of-age story only to end with the death of the hero without his acting on the knowledge he has gained, especially about himself? Nothing is resolved, and I am left unsatisfied . . . because the book has ended with no plot resolutions.

Reviewed by Lee L. Peoples

Book Review – A Mercy – Tony Morrison

Set in America in the mid to late 1600s in the early days of slavery,A Mercy is Toni Morrison’s latest novel. It begins in medias res, a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning. The characters, setting, and conflict are introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters. And so it is with A Mercy. It is 1690 when the story opens. The narrator, Florens, sixteen years old, is traveling to find the blacksmith, a free black man who has never known slavery, to bring him back to cure her mistress of smallpox, believing him to be a savior because he cured Sorrow, another servant, of her “boils.” Thus, it is quite sometime into the narrative before the reader feels confident that she or he understands what is going on. Of course, this adds to the suspense that is so like Toni Morrison. In addition, it is rife with superstition and multiple meanings (symbols), reminiscent of her Nobel Prize winner, Beloved.

Florens at six years old was given up by her mother to Sir, Jacob Vaark, in an act of mercy. Her mother had been taken from her country, Africa, by Portuguese slavers and brought to America, where she remained in slavery. At the “mercy” of the men on the plantation, she had two children, one a little boy, still a baby in her arms, and Florens, now six years old. Sir, orphaned himself at an early age, was a farmer from the north, having inherited property from a relative. He prospers, tires of farming, and becomes a trader and moneylender, finding enjoyment in the traveling his newfound interest requires. We meet him as he travels from his home in the north to Maryland to collect a debt. Expecting to be repaid in money, he ends up accepting Florens, not as a slave but as a second helper for his wife and Lina, an American Indian servant he had purchased to take care of his home and to help him on the farm. When he traveled, he preferred to leave his home and property in the care of women instead of men. Though he hired men, none except the blacksmith, whom he befriended and trusted, ever spent the night on the property.

When it is clear that he is not going to get his money from De Ortega, the plantation owner, he asks for Florens’s mother and her little girl, having no use for the baby boy she holds in her arms. Florens’s mother, having “read” something in Sir and surmised that her daughter would be better off away from the plantation, where the only future she has is the repeat of her own fate, has deliberately placed herself in such a way so as to attract his attention. The owner says no to Jacob’s request, as she knew he would, so she offers Florens instead.

Florens’s future does look bright for ten years as she joins Lina, Mistress, and now Sorrow, another female taken in by Sir as an act of kindness to help his wife take care of the farm in his absence as he travels. Then Sir dies; and the women are left unprotected, with an unpredictable future ahead of them.

Other characters include two indentured servants, Willard and Scully, and of course the blacksmith, who is better off than any of the other characters. Florens has fallen in love with him and believes he will protect her. She willingly travels to find him to bring him back to save Mistress from death, as he was too late to save Sir. Mistress herself had traveled from England to marry Sir, having been sold to him by her father.

When Florens returns to the farm alone?the blacksmith having preceded her alone to arrive at the farm more quickly?things have drastically changed. Mistress, previously kind, has turned to religion and has become quite harsh in her treatment of the servants, who before were treated not as servants but as equals and friends. (What is Morrison saying about religion and its influences in a person’s life?) But the blacksmith has turned against Florens; and she returns to the farm only because she has no place else to go. It is in the last chapter, narrated by her mother in a flashback, that we understand the “acts of mercy” most of the characters have undergone, only to be left awash in the end.

Each of the characters in one way or another has been the receiver (victim?) of some sort of mercy gone awry. Lina, “Messalina,” the American Indian, was rescued by the Presbyterians when her family died and her village burned. At fourteen, she was bought by Sir from the Presbyterians to tend his home and help him with the farm.

Rebekka, later called Mistress, without much of a future in her own country, came over from England on the Angelus at the age of sixteen. She had been sold to Jacob in the New World. She travels by ship across the water, is married, and becomes the mistress of Jacob’s home.

When she becomes ill and delirious, she imagines she is visited by the seven women who came over with her: Anne, sent away in disgrace by her family; Judith and Lydia, prostitutes ordered to choose between prison or exile?Lydia was accompanied by her daughter, Patty, a ten-year-old thief; Elizabeth, who said she was the daughter of an important Company agent; Abigail, who was quickly transferred to the captain’s cabin; and one other, Dorothea, a cutpurse whose sentence was the same as that of the prostitutes. Rebekka alone, her passage prepaid, was to be married. The rest were being met by relatives or craftsmen who would pay their passge.

Born to Rebekka and Jacob was first a daughter, Patrician, who lived to five years old while three brothers after her died from one or another illness. Patrician died as the result of being kicked in the head by a horse, and something inside Rebekka began to die. She never recuperated. Then Jacob died, and the three servants were left to fend for themselves.

Sorrow, born and raised on Captain’s ship, not as a daughter but as perhaps a future crewman-to-be, was saved from drowning when the ship foundered and everyone else on board was either killed or drowned. She was difficult to train and was thought to be cursed, always seeming somewhat unbalanced. Dressed always in boys’ clothes, she was fit for little else than sewing. Until the accident, she had never set foot on land. At eleven years old, she was accepted by Sir and taken to his home to assist with the farm and to help his wife when her saviors wanted to be rid of her.

“Such were the ravages of Vaark’s death. And the consequences of women in thrall to men or pointedly without them” (155).

Reviewed by Lee L. Peoples