Book Bag: Summertime in the Book World, and the Reading is Easy

book_naamahs_curse.jpgNaamah’s Curse
Written by Jacqueline Carey

This is the second book of the third trilogy (not as confusing as it sounds) set in an alternate renaissance world. The first two trilogies featured a character named Phèdre nó Delaunay, a spy and courtesan in a world that took its diplomatic and erotic adventures very seriously. It also introduced her nemesis Melisande Shirazai, one of the loveliest and most vile villains ever.

The latest series features the mystically gifted Moirin, a mysterious Eirish woman of many talents. She was introduced in Naamah’s Kiss, the first book in the new trilogy, which is now available in paperback. In the last book, after an epic battle set in Ch’in, Moirin and the love of her life, Bao, were separated and in this new book she is on a quest to find him.

 

Ms. Carey is the sort of writer who can be counted on to each year
bring her readers a lengthy new chapter of a long and compelling saga
set in a world that is both more beautiful and more Machiavellian than
our own. Despite the alternate-world setting this is definitely a book
for grownups that deals very explicitly with sexual matters, a
preoccupation that is not so different from our own world — n’est-ce
pas?

Naamah’s Curse, by Jacqueline Carey; Grand Central Publishing; 567 pages, $26.00.

 


book_secret_lives.jpgThe Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
Written by Lola Shoneyin

This is the story of the Alao family at
the moment when everything falls apart. The action centers on the time
when Baba Segi, the patriarch of this large family takes a fourth, and
university-educated, wife, who unfortunately does not become pregnant.

As a result, tensions that had remained manageable can no longer
be handled, and deadly secrets erupt. It would be unfair to unveil the
twist that takes the final third of the book to the next level. Suffice
it to say that Ms. Shoneyin successfully weaves together and contrasts
the hardscrabble, often sad, lives of the women, at the same time
painting a fascinating, and revolting, picture of polygamy as it is
practiced in parts of Africa today.

Ms. Shoneyin is the daughter-in-law of Nobel Prize winner Wole
Soyinka, and was actually raised in a family that practiced polygamy in
her grandparents’ generation. She is a teacher of English and drama as
well as a school administrator and mother of four, who nevertheless
confesses to writing all the time. She cites as influences Toni
Morrison, Isabelle Allende and Margaret Atwood.

Her book is juicy like a beach read, but deeply authentic and
grave. The book has already made its debut overseas but has just arrived
here last week.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, by Lola Shoneyin; William Morrow; 280 pages; $23.99.

 


book_shadow_of_your_smile.jpgThe Shadow of Your Smile
Written by Mary Higgins Clark

Unless you are one of those people
with unwaveringly correct radar — the kind that always lets you know
what is going to happen next — here you will find the simple pleasures
of storytelling that Mary Higgins Clark has mastered so well — and that
keep her books selling year after year.

In this one, a brilliant young pediatrician, who doesn’t know who
she really is, is being stalked by more than one creep who wants her
dead, either for money or for some other equally compelling reason. At
the same time the beatification process is underway for a woman who may
be one of Dr. Monica’s long-lost relatives. Clark’s frothy new novel
goes down like a tall frosty one.

The Shadow of Your Smile, by Mary Higgins Clark; Simon & Schuster; 319 pages; $25.99.

 


The Magicians
Written by Lev Grossman

There is something about the books we read as children that never
leaves us, and often impacts the people we become as adults. Those that
open the doorways to other worlds can be the best ones: The Chronicles
of Narnia, for example, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

book_magicians.jpgIn The Magicians, the author has taken those influences and
brought them smoothly into the 21st century. Quentin, the flawed yet
brilliant hero, is a top student in Brooklyn who finds himself in a
global variation of Hogwarts in upstate New York. At first he thinks he
is in Fillory, an alternate world that he has adored since childhood.
But no. Instead he gains very-competitive admission to Brakebills and
spends the next few years becoming a master magician, with a small but
again brilliant coterie of equally unusual friends.

Is there really a Fillory? What happens to our childhood dreams
when the answers to them are put into our hands? And what are the side
effects of absolute power. These are just some of the questions that are
asked and answered in this highly entertaining tale from Mr. Grossman,
who also is the book critic for Time magazine.  

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman; Plume; 402 pages; $16.00.