Inheritance From Mother, by Minae Mizumura. 2012; Other Press English translation 2016

 

The Katsura sisters have long had an embattled relationship with their mother. Noriko Katsura, is an egotistical and selfish woman with a taste for the finer things in life, and little, if any, feelings for people. The sisters dream of the day when their mother will finally die, and her demands on them will stop.

This sounds horrible, especially in a society where children are expected to love, revere, and care selflessly for their parents. But for Mitsuki, the daughter on whom the majority of the burden falls on, it’s a chance to finally live her own life. As a child, she was neglected in favor of Natsuki, her more beautiful and talented sister. As an adult, her life is pretty much run by her husband, a fellow college instructor who wants a luxury condo- and is having (another) affair with a younger woman. What would Mitsuki do if she could make decisions without having to consider either of these people?

The first half of the book revolves around Noriko’s final hospitalization and death, and fills us in on the history of the Katsura family. The second half is what Mitsuki does after her mother’s death as she figures out what she really wants out of life. It’s fascinating reading the history of her family and how it was shaped by Japanese culture, as that culture itself changes through modernization and influences from the West. While told in third person, Mitsuki is the main focus of the tale. Mother/daughter relationships, marriage, aging, and sister relationships are all treated here with sensitivity and depth. 

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Bitter Winds: Book 3 in the Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters, by Kay Bratt. Lake Union Publishing, 2014

I wasn’t aware that “Bitter Winds” was the third in a series when I ordered it; it works as a standalone novel but I think would have made more sense if it had been read in order. The cast of characters is large, and I spent a good bit of time thinking “Now, who is this person again?!?” But the story concentrates mainly on four characters: Lily & Ivy, twin teenagers, Lily being a blind violinist and Ivy her guide through life; Li Jin, who runs the shelter they all live in and acts as chef; and Sami, Li Jin’s friend from a previous book, who has led a thoroughly horrible life up to this point.

Lily wants to make some money by playing her violin in public (which is classed as begging by the Chinese government). When the police make a sweep to remove all the beggars from a festival, Lily gets separated from her sister Ivy. By happenstance she is found holding a leaflet for the forbidden Falun Gong sect, which means imprisonment in a mental hospital and possibly a stay in a ‘reeducation camp’, which carry a huge fine, instead of immediate release with a small fine. Meanwhile, Sami gives birth. She’s far from a natural mother, and wants nothing to do with the child. She also does nothing to help around the shelter, which is a communal situation. Li Jin is overworked, spending a lot of time trying to come up with the money to get Lily released. It’s a tense time for them all, with Lily and Ivy in some very scary situations. The ending is a surprise; we are led to think one thing will happen and it’s the opposite. It’s a bit of a deus ex machina, and I wished the details had been spelled out, but it works.

Li Jin is almost too good to be real, although without having read the first two books I could be missing a lot. Sami actually turns out to be the most interesting person in the end. Lily and Ivy are fairly well fleshed out, but no one is really developed all that well. Once again, I could be missing a lot because of this being the first of the books I’ve read. I’m not totally sure if I’ll seek out the others; it was a nice read but not really gripping. 

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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for a fair review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.  

Vanessa and Her Sister, by Priya Parmar. Ballantine, 2014

I’d read a non-fiction account of Vanessa Bell’s life, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this book would be. What I hadn’t counted on was the difference between a dispassionate relating of a life versus a first person account.

This book is told mostly via the device of Vanessa’s (nonexistent) diary, with other voices filling gaps via postcards, letters & telegrams. Vanessa is Vanessa Bell, the painter, and her sister is Virginia Woolf. The other voices are the rest of the Bloomsbury group, those Bohemian intellectuals and artists of the early 20^th century. Covering 1905 through 1912, we get to watch Clive Bell court Vanessa Stephens and marry her. We watch as Virginia wanders in and out of manic and depressive states, and works constantly to have everyone’s attention on her. I knew Virginia Woolf suffered by bipolar disorder; I was unaware of her strong streak of Narcissism.

Getting the story via Vanessa’s diary allows us to feel what she felt with an immediacy that can’t be expressed through other points of view. The intensity of being in Vanessa’s head as each event happened made me unable to put the book down. The keenness of her sadness when loved ones died and her near constant anxiety about what Virginia and/or Bell would do next is raw and aching. I read the book in two days, dying to see what would happen next, and was bereft when I finished it because I knew Vanessa led a long life and I wasn’t going to get to see the rest of it through this author’s eyes.

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. 

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.  

Season of the Dragonflies, by Sarah Creech. HarperCollins 2014

If you took Patrick Suskind’s ‘Perfume’ and mixed it with Alice Hoffman’s, well, any of her books, you might come up with ‘Season of the Dragonflies’. In the 1920s, on a tropical island, Serena Lenore discovers a magical variety of gardenia, which not only smells divine but also amplifies a woman’s talents and gives her… something… that allows her to succeed beyond all others. Through the decades this perfume has been shared, secretly and profitably, with a very few women in all different trades. There are a few rules that Serena handed down; one was to never, ever alter the secret formula. The sales of this perfume has made the Lenore family fabulously wealthy, although they live without conspicuous consumption and put a lot of money into philanthropy.

Willow has run the company alone for decades. When one of her daughters,Mya – who was the assumed heir to the company- goes behind her back and makes a deal with a client that blows up, the entire operation is in danger of failing. And when she performs some dark magic to repair things, it gets even worse. Can the recently divorced Lucia, who never had any magic in her and had no talent for mixing scents, help her mother and sister?

During the book, things change dramatically for all three Lenore women. Their roles change, their relationships change, even their talents change. It’s a time of growth for them; sometimes very painful growth. It’s also a time of learning to let go and trust the universe.

The story is well written enough although it does have a little bit of ‘first novelism’ in places- mainly in the romances. All three women find themselves involved with men who are almost too good to be true; it’s always hard for me to accept characters that have no flaws and when three of them appear in the same book it’s unbelievable- but then, this book *does* have magic as a reality in it, so perhaps this can be forgiven. The other thing I found a bit difficult was how easily the three women accepted the changes- major changes- in their lives. Still, I enjoyed the book a great deal and look forward to more by this author.  

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in return for a fair review. 

The above is an affiliate link; if you click through and buy something Amazon will give me a few cents. 

Neither of these things affected my review.