Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
Have I read anything else from this author? Yes, I read The Joy Luck Club in college. Nothing else since.
Was this book better than this author's other book(s)? No, it isn't as good as The Joy Luck Club, but that's a very high standard to live up to.
Was this book enjoyable? Yes, this book is highly enjoyable. I felt a strong, nearly instant bond with the main character, Violet.
Did I learn anything new from this book? I may have incidentally learned a little bit about the timeline of U.S.-China relations, but this book is meant to entertain, not teach history.
Where did I get this book? I bought this book from a library used book sale, originally for my grandma. She read it and I inherited a stack of her books when she passed away.
Do I recommend this book to other readers? Yes, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. If you liked The Invention of Wings or Hemingway's Girl, you might like this one too.
I Am: Busy with my full-time online editing job, a new freelance job writing catalog descriptions (clothes and shoes, mostly, for a local store with a surprisingly large online reach) and ghost-writing some short stories.
I'm sneaking in as much reading time as I can, though. Here are a few updates on what I've read, am reading or have on the horizon.
I Have Read: Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck. 5 stars. I was not in any way disappointed with the second half of the book. It's a permanent keeper; I put it on the shelf next to The Old Man and the Sea.
I Want to Read: Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck. I could have ordered it for free from Amazon Vine, but I didn't. I've got to read some things before I bring in any more.
Safe Word by Molly Weatherfield. Cleis Press sent me a review copy this week.
I Really, Really Want to Read: Lover at Last by J.R. Ward. A copy (from the library) sits on the table in front of me as I type. I'm going to let my mom read it first, though. She wants to finish it before she goes on vacation, because it will come due while she and my dad are out of state.
I'm Reading: Covet by J.R. Ward. I swear I will finish this book one of these days, but I still have about 74 pages to go. Maybe over the weekend.
'The Watcher in the Shadows,' freshly arrived in its Amazon Vine envelope
I also started The Watcher in the Shadows by Chris Moriarty. It's another Amazon Vine pick, and I really enjoyed the first book in the series. I'm usually reading two different books in two different parts of the house.
I Saw: Les Miserables. I swore I wasn't going to watch this opera unless there was a director's cut with Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe singing their parts naked. But I still put it in my Netflix DVD queue; I had to see what all the fuss was about. I assumed I'd be bored, but it was actually pretty good.
Add this to the list of I Saw the Movie, Didn't Read the Book. No, I don't want to read the book. I already have a dead French guy whose brick-like tome I adore; it is Alexandre Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo. I must say non to Mr. Hugo.
I'm currently halfway through reading Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck. I can't even wait until I finish this book to blog about it because I love, love, love this book. This is a case of "I waited forever to pick it up, but once I did I was sorry I ever waited."
The publisher's description as found on GoodReads says:
“She remembered when Hemingway had planted a banyan at his house and told her its parasitic roots were like human desire. At the time she’d thought it romantic. She hadn’t understood his warning.”
"In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.
"When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation...even as the reliable Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most. Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams? As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths...and the possibility of losing everything she loves."
I've been a little obsessed with Ernest Hemingway ever since I was 18. My Novel class read A Farewell to Arms, and then we went on a class trip to Oak Park, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago). We visited a Hemingway display at the public library, Oak Park and River Forest High School (Hemingway's alma mater), and Hemingway's childhood home (where you'll find his earliest short story, "Cat," written and illustrated when he was four). Because I'd already bonded with the deceased author in his home environment, it was that much exciting in 2004 when Tit Elingtin and I visited the Hemingway house in Key West, Florida. (I personally took the following two photos. They're not great photos, but they're mine.)
Hemingway's bar. When he drank there, it was called Sloppy Joe's. There's still a Sloppy Joe's in Key West, but it's at a different location.
Inside the master bedroom. (I don't know the person pictured; she's just another tourist.)
I have a Hemingway bond - which is why I nearly blow a blood vessel when I watch Lost and Henry/Ben says Ernest Hemingway "fought in the Spanish Civil War." Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, and before that he was wounded in the First World War, not as a combatant but as a civilian Red Cross volunteer. Ben Linus can quote John Steinbeck at will, so he should be well-versed enough in American literature to understand that distinction. Now, Hemingway's Girl is completely fictional. Mariella Bennet is a product of the author's imagination. Even though some names and places are based on real life, Robuck states up front that she's taken artistic license with them. No one should mistake this book for history. Reading Hemingway's Girl brings back a lot of pleasant memories of our vacation to Key West. The 1930s (Depression-era) tropical setting is really enjoyable, and I recognize some of the major Key West landmarks, like Mallory Square at sunset. I'm loving this book for a number of other reasons as well. For one thing, Mariella Bennet is the kind of strong, self-reliant, confident heroine you just have to love. She's wrestling with her own conscience, fighting her attraction to "Papa" and developing her attraction to the scarred World War I vet Gavin. She never loses sight of her goals, though: making sure her two little sisters are taken care of now that their father's gone and saving money to open her own charter boat business. Mariella is a fully developed character, with goals, flaws, weaknesses and strengths. Hemingway as a character, too, has flaws and strengths; he is neither overly romanticized nor reduced to a caricature of himself. Another place I really have to give Robuck credit is in the relationship between Mariella and Hemingway's wife Pauline. This could have been just another example of two female characters who have a cold, bitchy relationship characterized by rivalry - the old stereotype that women are like beta fish and you can't put two in the same fishbowl without a fight to the death. Pauline is a well-developed character with faults and strengths. We can empathize with her even though she can, at times, be jealous or condescending. Instead of setting them up as enemies, Robuck allows the women to be characters who each have their own needs and concerns, some of which are in conflict, but who also can sympathize with and help each other. I love a book that respects its female characters enough to let them be human.
Even though I haven't finished it yet, I'd recommend giving this book a chance. I don't think I'm going to be disappointed with it, whatever Mariella decides in regard to her relationships. (We know from the prologue that, 25 or so years after the events of the main narration, Mariella has an adult son. I presume that Gavin is going to be that son's father, but I can't know for sure yet.) You never know - sometimes it's possible to love, love, love the first half of the book and then get disenchanted with later chapters (Her Fearful Symmetry, I'm looking at you).
If you read this, let me know whether you liked it or not.
I wasn't going to buy any more books for a while. In May, the Amazon Vine program is changing; currently, you have to write reviews of 80% of the items you've ordered to get another two items, but in May it'll be 100%. That means by the third Thursday in May, I'll have to have read three books:
Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck - I'm currently on page 25, and I've got to say the heroine, Mariella, is pretty hard not to love.
The Difference a Day Makes (Perfect, Indiana: Book Two) by Barbara Longley, the sequel to Far From Perfect
...so I'll be busy reading these, and also Covet by J.R. Ward. This is the second time I've tried to read her non-Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and I just couldn't get into it. It's actually pretty good - the main character, Jim Heron, seems to be a building contractor but actually has secret assassin skills gained from covert military ops. He's like Mr. Reese on Person of Interest, but instead of a reclusive billionaire boss he's now working for mysterious supernatural beings. His first "number" is Vin diPietro, a real estate mogul who, against his wishes, is also a medium who gets flashes of when people are going to die. In seven books, Jim will battle the seven deadly sins, starting with attempting to save Vin from greed.
Covet will also hold me over until I get my hands on the book I really want, Ward's Lover at Last. I'm gonna need Qhuinn and Blaylock to get their HEA - finally. (Sidenote: Thanks to this vampire/goddess article on SecretSun.blogspot.com, I remembered that the bisexual vampire played by Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger was named Miriam Blaylock. Did J.R. Ward name her gay vampire character after Miriam?)
"An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo." Apparently it takes place after the end of the Dumas novel, and is about the Count and Mercedes - not the Count and Haydee. What happens to Haydee? I hope she doesn't make good on her statement that she'll die if the Count leaves her. I don't think it would be possible to exaggerate how badly I need to know what happens in this book - so I ordered it from Better World Books.
I read The Count of Monte Cristo in January. I desperately wanted the book to be longer. I read an abridged version, but even so, the ending left too many questions unanswered. Burning with questions, I read the modern sequel The Sultan of Monte Cristo by "Holy Ghost Writer." It was poorly written and unsatisfying for a huge number of reasons.
So please, Colette Gale, do not disappoint me.
Colette Gale sounds like a false name to me. Not just because Colette is a beautiful pen name in reference to the wonderful hell-raising 20th century French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette who was known professionally only by her last name. (I learned the cooking term aspic from one of her short stories - but I digress.) Also because "Henry Gale" is the false name that Ben Linus initially gives the survivors on Lost - the name of Dorothy Gale's Kansas-bound uncle to go along with his Ozian tale of arriving on the island via hot air balloon. If the name "Colette Gale" is in tribute to both a beloved, prolific French author and the beloved, prolific U.S. author L. Frank Baum, then I expect a high quality of very imaginative and sensual work.
Oh, and as a nod to the title of this post, I now present for your amusement (I hope) "Call Me a Hole," a musical mash-up of the vocals from Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" and the melody of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe."
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
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