The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab weaves an historical tale of a young woman who, out of desperation, makes a deal with "the darkness" even though she has been warned by the village wise woman to "never pray to the gods that answer after dark." Adeline LaRue has a wild spirit that longs to escape the confines of her small French village in the 1700s. When her parents promise her to a local villager as a bride, Addie runs away and inadvertently trades her presence for freedom. "She is cursed to be instantly forgotten by everyone she meets...A lonely Addie travels the world, sometimes forcibly moved by Luc, the literally handsome devil to whom she now owes her soul. She must survive by stealing and hiding because she is unable to establish any personal or business relationships... However, as she nears the 300th anniversary of her bargain, she may have discovered a loophole in the curse... " (Library Journal). They close their review, calling this  a "well-crafted exploration of the human condition... Recommend to those who appreciate atmospheric, character-driven dramas."

Publishers Weekly gushes in their review: "This sweeping fantasy is as much a love story as it is a tribute to storytelling, art, and inspiration. Schwab's diverse cast is beautifully rendered, and the view of human connection on offer is biting and bitter, yet introspective and sweet. This ambitious and hopeful work is a knockout." Similarly, Booklist praises, "Narratively, this is a whirlwind--deeply romantic, impossibly detailed, filled with lush language, wry humor, and bitter memories. This often startlingly raw story begs the questions: what is a soul? What does it mean to be remembered? And what prize is worth giving those things up?" Kirkus also recommends the book: "This spellbinding story unspools in multiple timelines as Addie moves through history, learning the rules of her curse and the whims of her captor. Meanwhile, both Addie and the reader get to know Henry and understand what sets him apart. This is the kind of book you stay up all night reading—rich and satisfying and strange and impeccably crafted. Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game."

The Antidote

This novel by Karen Russell is set in the fictional town of 1935 Uz, Nebraska--right in the heart of the dust bowl and still struggling with the repercussions of the Great Depression. Some books are notable for drawing the reader in with the opening sentence or paragraph, but this one will deter many readers with a prologue which describes a hideous act of animal cruelty. Chapters are told from several different characters' points of view. One of the magical elements of this historic novel is the presence of what are called "prairie witches," who can store people's painful memories until the owner wants to retrieve them -- if ever. In this way Antonina Rossi, was the prairie witch of Uz, says she can be the antidote to guilt, shame and other undesirable thoughts. The sheriff of Uz has  often coerced Antonina into hearing and storing the memories of prisoners who the sheriff wants to prevent from complaining about their abuse at his hands. Prairie witches go into a trance whenever someone shares their memories so they don't recall what they are told, but Antonina knows that there are terrible things going on. When she loses her abilities to store and retrieve memories during the April 14, 1925 "Black Sunday" dust storm, she takes under her wing a local teenage basketball staar named Dell, short for Asphodel. Together they concoct a scheme to offer fake memories to those who come to retrieve memories. Dell has recently lost her mother to a murderer and has come to live with her uncle Harp Oletsky, a farmer who seems unexplainably been spared some of the worst effects of the drought and dust storms. The main narrators are rounded out by a New Deal photographer, Cleo Allfrey, who is traveling the west to provide pictures that would support Roosevelt's agenda.  Cleo comes into posssession of a camera which takes picture not of what is seen through the lense but instead of what historically existed or what could possibly exist in the future on that piece of land. She says of this inexplicable phenomenon that "The emptiness of any place is an illusion.  That's what this camera has taught me. Any piece of earth is brimming over with living (p. 319)."There are a couple of ancillary narrators, too: a sentient scarecrow, which is also spared the ravages of the storms, and a cat. All are ultimately involved in an effort to reveal the cover up of the sheriff, who has arrested and sentenced to death a young hobo for the murder of several women in the area, including Dell's mother. 

The Washington Post praises the book, noting at one point in their review, "what’s wondrous about “The Antidote” is how implacably it keeps swelling, gathering up swaths of history. In some sections, we’re drawn into a brutal institution for unwed mothers, which allows Russell to examine the way sexual roles were proscribed and enforced to control young women. We learn about Polish peasants who escaped oppression in Europe to settle in Nebraska, Native Americans who were removed from this land to make room for White farmers, and the agricultural malpractice that contributed to the Dust Bowl." 

NPR calls this a "spellbinding" and "epic American novel." Kirkus also praises, saying "Russell has always expertly woven the strange into depictions of the everyday, and her long-awaited second novel is no exception." They close with these comments: "A singular, haunting vision that fearlessly excavates the past and challenges the reader to face the future head-on. A storytelling tour de force that lives up to the promise of its name." Publishers Weekly calls it "an inspired and unforgettable fusion of the gritty and the fantastic." The New York Times says the book "blends speculative and fantasy elements with rich language and vivid characters in an effort not to escape reality but to comment even more thoughtfully on it....Sometimes you need to invoke the impossible to capture the truth."They go on to praise, "Russell’s lyrical writing dazzles on every page."

 

 

Brewed Awakening

I am unjustifiably surprised to find that their is yet another culinary based mystery series of which I have been totally unaware. There are almost 20 books in Cleo Coyle's "Coffeehouse Mysteries" series, this being the newest installment. Cleo Coyle is the pen name for the husband-and-wife team of Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini. There is seemingly an endless appetite (all puns intended) for books featuring food, beverages and recipes. The protagonist of this series is coffee roaster par excellence and owner of the coffee shop Village Blend,  Clare Cosi. Clare awakes on a park bench in Washington Square with no memory of how she came to be there and why everything looks so different. Turns out that Clare disappeared several days earlier when she went to a private tasting for wedding cakes hosted by an acquaintance and friend of her former mother-in-law. That woman, hotel heiress Annette Brewster, was kidnapped at gunpoint based on video footage from the hotel's garage, and Clare was a witness. The only problem is--and it's a big one--Clare can't remember a thing, and, in fact, has lost all memory of the last 15 years of her life. In her mind, she has just found out that her ex-husband, Matteo, has been cheating on her for years, their daughter is still in pigtails, and she has never met the man she is engaged to marry, Detective Mike Quinn. A celebrity psychologist, Dr. Lorca, who specializes in working with memory problems, offers to take her on as a patient for no charge, but it quickly becomes apparent that he has alternative motives. Maybe they are as benign as having another subject for another best-seller, or maybe something more sinister is behind his desire to move Clare to his private clinic, locked away from everyone who knows and loves her. To complicate matters, the police become suspicious of Clare's memory lapse and begin to consider that Clare was complicit in the kidnapping. It is a pretty compelling mystery and a provocative premise. Kirkus notes it's "An unsettling, often scary account of how memory loss affects a strong woman’s life." Publishers Weekly calls it a " delightfully twisty mystery" and asks " an intriguing question: if you lost all memory of your beloved, would you fall for him all over again?"

Recursion

Blake Crouch is the prodigious author of speculative fiction books and this is the 2nd book of his I have read (see my post on Dark Matter). He offers up another example of a mind bending proposition, in this case, what if memory creates reality. And what if you could change people's memories or let them go back into a remembered event and start life over from that point. There would be a new timeline to accompany that life. Only it turns out that the previous timeline/ set of memories, would also still be present. It might be enough to make people crazy. And that is what happens. As more and more people are affected by "False Memory Syndrome" mass insanity follows.
It started out with the best of intentions by scientist Helena Smith--what's that saying about paving the road to hell--as she tries to find a way to map and recreate memories  to alleviate the losses associated with Alzheimer's Disease. But this research, prompted by her mother's own descent into disconnection through forgetting, gets hijacked by a lab tech, Marcus Slade, who first uses the technology to make a personal fortune, and then to sell the technology to those who regret the roads not taken. Unfortunately, the ultimate outcome is that the plans for building the "memory chair"--which basically allows the altering of reality--is hacked from Slade's lab and people begin to use it for bad purposes and nuclear war on a massive scale ensues. So the creative genius behind the chair, Helena, goes back and lives life over, time and time and time again, trying to make things turn out differently.
It was compelling but also somewhat mentally exhausting to read this and to stretch my mind around how this can happen. Recommended for hard core sci-fi readers only.
Laudatory reviews on NPR, from the New York Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and from Kirkus which accurately calls this book "An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender."