Review: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

Author: Lola Shoneyin
Format: hard cover 288 pgs
Characters: Baba Segi, Iya Segi, Iya Trope, Iya Femi, Bolanle
Subject: Life in a Polygamous society
Setting: Nigeria
Genre: Fiction
Source: Early Review Program from LibraryThing.com
Challenge: ARCs completed


An unusual look at life in modern day Nigeria, using the theme of polygamous marriage as the setting.  Baba Segi is a small time merchant who, because of the success of his marriages, thinks he is a big timer.  His first wife, and ex officio major domo of the household, has presented him with two daughters and a son.  He is unaware that she is also the source of his wealth (his mother and her mother having conspired to settle a large sum on the wife in return for the marriage).  Life goes along, he brings home wife #2, whose background has sufficiently cowed her so that she is grateful for a nice house, a shared husband, and the chance to braid hair for all the children.  When wife #3 comes along, there is a bit more turmoil, since she is one who likes to look pretty, does no housework, and just wants to enjoy the good life.  In spite of their differences, the three wives eventually settle into a routine each can live with, they enjoy their children and their status and Baba Segi is living the high life.

The apple cart is upset, however, when wife #4 joins the party.  She is young and HORROR OF HORRORS--she is University Educated.  She tries to teach the other wives and the children to read, she goes off on her own during the day to shop, she takes her turn at the household  (and marital) chores, but isn't allowed by 1-3 to really become assimilated into the group.  They despise her, and begin plotting to have her removed (hopefully by forcing her to leave on her own.). She simply refuses to be intimidated.  When wife #4 is unable to conceive, a wise medicine man suggests to Baba Segi that he take her to a hospital, since she would be much more likely to listen to the educated doctors, then to tribal medicine men.  The test results are surprising, and will ultimately threaten not only marriage #4, but 1,2 and 3 also.

The ensuing happenings are by turn tragic, comic, and surprising.  I'm not sure if the author was trying to give us an anthropological picture of life in modern day Nigeria, or use this to form the basis of an African sit-com. The characters seem almost to be stereotypes, and  I found it hard to follow the constant change of POV that occurred with each chapter.  I wish the author had given us  more indication at the beginning of each change so I could see who was actually speaking, but in the end, it did not substantially detract from my ability to follow the story.  It's not going to win any prizes, but the average reader will be able to finish and enjoy it.

Review: the map of true places

Author: Brunonia Barry
Format: galley proof -406 pages
Characters: Zee, Finch, Melville, Hawk
Subject: Dealing with mental illness & Parkinson's disease
Setting: Salem Massachusetts
Genre: literary fiction
Source: LibraryThing.com Early Review program
Challenge: ARC Completed


This could have been a really depressing book.  After all the subjects are suicide, bi-polar disorder, Parkinson's disease, betrayal, and depression.  Instead of leaving the reader reaching for the Prozac bottle however, the story ends leaving the reader uplifted.

It is a great story about a story (is it true or is it a fairy tale?), and about a young woman's search for herself, her mother, and her future.  Zee Finch is a pyschologist whose patient Lilly (a young woman close to her age) jumps off a bridge when she should have been at her appointment with Zee.  Since Lilly reminds Zee of her own mother (the original story-teller) whose bi-polar disease caused her to commit suicide when Zee was 13, our heroine is doubly bummed.  Is she mixing up the two women in her own mind?  In addition, her fiance is pressuring her to make plans for their scheduled wedding and Zee seems unable to make any decisions.  She's not even sure she wants to get married.

She instead chooses to go home to see her father, whom everyone calls "Finch," a noted Hawthorne scholar who lives directly across the street from Hawthorne's house in Salem.  Finch suffers from Parkinson's disease, and it becomes immediately evident to Zee that his condition has dramatically worsened since she last saw him.  Her patients back in Boston are shifted to others in the practice while she deals with the mountain of issues associated with caring for an aging and ill parent who daily becomes more demented.  The rest of the story that follows is touching and to tell it here would ruin an excellent read.  The short chapters, the crisp prose, the outstanding dialogue,  the building suspense surrounding several characters, all lend themselves to keeping the reader awake long past bedtime to find out how it ends.

I almost wish this book didn't have an epilogue.  Although the story's ending is quite well-done, the epilogue seems to have been written to answer all the questions a non-dreamy reader might have about "what happened after that?"  Instead of leaving us with a delightful suspicion and willing to use our own imagination to write several different scenarios of what might have been, the author seems intent upon tying up every last string so everything can be shoved neatly into one secure package.  Still in all, it is a book worth savoring. 

If you're looking for a good vacation fiction read with some romance, some suspense, and a well written story, you won't go wrong with this one.

Thanks to the LibraryThing.com Early Review program for letting me have this one to review.

Review: Lake Magic

Author: Kimberly Fisk
Format: mass market paperback, 336 pages
Characters: Jennifer Bekinsale, and Jared Worth
Subject: relationships
Setting: Pacific Northwest

Genre: fiction- romance
Source: LibraryThing Early Review program

A pleasant romance with just enough sexual tension to keep the reader from falling asleep.  While not the traditional bodice ripper, the story is fairly predictable: girl loses love of life; love of life's best friend shows up.  Girl hates new guy, new guy thinks he hates best friend's girl.  Both must work together to keep the dead dude's business going.......you get the picture. As a sideline to add interest, there are some family dynamics from girl's side-- a career woman sister whose son is floundering without parental guidance, overbearing mother, stuck-up attorney brother...etc etc etc.

In spite of the formulaic plot and setting, the characters are reasonably well drawn, the writing is clean, and in the end.......well no spoilers here.

I do wish the editing could have been tighter.  After a while, the recitation of the mental gymnastics of the two main characters got to be a bit much as they struggled to resolve the angst of this relationship.  All in all tho, it's an nice read for a rainy afternoon.

Review: Homer's Odyssey

Author: Gwen Cooper
Format: Audio  9hr, 34 mins                            
Characters: Homer the blind cat
Setting: South Beach FL, Manhattan
Source: Overdrive Audio download from public library

While this book is billed as the story of a blind cat named Homer, it's as much the story of his owner Gwen Cooper  and her struggles to come to grips with adulthood, relationships, and life with three cats.

At first I thought it was just going to be another one of these "isn't he a miracle--look, he's blind and he can still function'" stories. But when Ms. Cooper moves to New York from Florida early in 2001, and ensconces herself and the three cats into a 31st floor apartment only 6 blocks from the World Trade Center, you knew what was coming. Her story of the heroic efforts of ordinary people, the mind numbing panic of trying to find out what was happening, and her subsequent rescue of 'her babies' was the best part of the book.

I listened to the audio version of this, read by Rene Raudman.The narration is excellent. I also thoroughly enjoyed the interview at the end of the book with Ms. Cooper and her husband.

Even if you're not a cat lover, this book has enough to offer for everyone.

2010 Challenges - ARC Catch UP

A RC Catch up..........

Well................we all have a stack of ARCs waiting to be read, and several websites are featuring all kinds of challenges with rules to say how to count them.

I'm just challenging myself to catch up on the list below and then STAY CAUGHT UP --that is, no ARC will sit unread for longer than 6 weeks.  At the end of 2010, there will be no more than 10 ARCs or Early Review copies left.

Let's do some definitions:

ARCs are books received from authors or publishers given with the expectation of a published review.
"Catching up" is defined as reading, reviewing and posting the review of the book.

Books won in contests sponsored by bloggers are not considered ARCs unless the rules of the contest specify that a review is expected.

Here's the list of what is sitting on my shelf right now

1. Night Gardener by George Pelecanos
2. Book of William by Paul Collins
3. My Name is Will by Jess Winfield
4. Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
5. Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that redrew the Map of the New World by Douglas Hunter
6. Boy who harnessed the wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba
7. Artist in Treason: The extraordinary life of General James Wilkinson by Andro Linklater
8. Mercury in Retrograde by Paula Froelich
9. Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
10. Maze Runner by James Dashner
11. Lovely Bones by Alice sebold
12. When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the present by Gail Collins
13. Who Turned out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis by Scott Bittle
14. Broken Road to disaster recovery by Keifer Bonvillain
15. Triangle of Deception by Haggai Carmon
16. Moonlight in Odessa by Janet S. Charles
17. Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton
18. Exit Music by Ian Rankin

I hope to really get these caught up this year. I'm going to read the new ones as soon as I get them, so the behind list doesn't grow any longer. I am promising myself to be a bit more selective about what books I take on for reviews, and to stop accepting ARCs if I get behind.  It's not fair to authors who want a review to give me a book if I can't get a timely review out there. 

Review: Sicilian Tragedee by Ottavio Cappellani

Not a book for everybody, particularly the homophobic, this is one of the funniest, most original I've read this year. Cappellani gives us a cast of characters that seem to have come from "the Sopranos", "Soap", and "The Birdcage". There are competing mafiosi, bitchy wives and mistresses, divas and queens (of both genders), contessas, barones and other assorted broken down aristocrats and enough bumbling politicians to populate a good sized congressional committee staff. And you have to love every one of them.

I've spent several weeks in Catania Sicily (the setting for the book) and visited much of the surrounding area, so this one was especially fun for me. However, I don't think you need to have been there to enjoy it.

Billed as a farce, and a take-off on Romeo and Juliet (try Romeo and Mercutio as the love interest!!), it involves the courtship of a mafioso's daughter Betty by another up and coming 'business man'.  Betty's father desparately wants to get her married off and out of his hair, and Betty's gay companion Carmine trys to help this endeavor along.  In addition to marrying off Betty, we are treated to the attempts by an over-drugged and highly emotional director/producer (Cagnotto) to find financing and sponsorship-as well as a venue-for his less than standard production of Shakespeare. He must also convince a bunch of aging actors (and one outrageous actress) of the wisdom of his "vision", all the while trying to maintain the affection of his latest lover "Bobo"  When you insert the meddling of the aging and devious Contessa Salieri, you have the ingredients for a true soap opera. Here, for example is her philosphy on giving parties (pg.132):

The contessa says that the guests, before they arrive at the party must be tested: first you make it hard for them to find a place to park, then you make them walk down a dark path lit by candles and (lined) with the gay waiters, and finally, when they arrive, you treat them badly and don't acknowledge their presence.  The Contessa says the point of this is to get the husbands and the wives to quarrel, so that they won't say a word to each other all evening, but will talk to other people out of spite, and then you have a good party.

A murder or two (it is the mafia after all) brings in more 'family members' as the plot keeps twisting. In the end it is a farce so exuberant in its mockery, that I suspect Shakespeare would have loved it.

Be warned: it is ribald, naughty, bawdy, raucous, coarse, vulgar, crude rude and lewd, and probably will be offensive to many (there is certainly a generous sprinkling of the 'f' word) but if you can take it as a spoof, or a glorious Sicilian soap opera, it is uproariously funny.  Yes, I'm Italian, and my father's generation probably would not particularly care for this portrayal except that it's set in Sicily, and for them, that's not quite Italian.  If you're looking for a good belly-laugh and very clever plotting, try this one.  I don't think it will disappoint.