A Memory of Violets, by Hazel Gaynor. HarperCollins 2015

In 1912, Tilly Harper leaves home to become a house mother in a home for former flower and watercress selling girls; the lucky occupants now work in a factory making artificial flowers, which were immensely popular at the time. Both belong to philanthropist Alfred Shaw, who rescues as many of the girls- the poorest of the poor, many of them with physical problems that prevent them from getting better employment- from the streets. When Tilly is putting her things away, she discovers a box with an old journal stored in it, and she reads it over the days as she has time. It’s the story of Florrie Flynn and the younger sister, Rosie, who she lost when Rosie was four years old. Florrie spent her entire short life living and working in the group home, and never gave up looking for her sister. This poignant tale inspires Tilly to try and find Rosie herself, and let her know how much her sister loved her.

It’s a sweet story, and paints a good picture of the lives of the flower girls and poverty in the late Victorian and Edwardian era in London. The flower factory and group homes are based on real ones established by John Groom. Tilly is a nice character with enough of a personal conflict to make her interesting. There is a love interest, but it really doesn’t add much to the story. There are also some amazing coincidences, but they are worked in well enough to be believable. Good story for a rainy or snowy afternoon.

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The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit, by Graham Joyce. Doubleday, 2013

In mid-1970s England, David is a college student wishing to avoid working the summer as a construction site gopher for his step-father. He winds up at the same beach resort where his father had a heart attack and died when David was three. Hired on as a ‘greencoat’(for the uniforms they must wear) to man the various games & contests set up for the shabby resort’s working class guests and to perform chores in the theaters, he makes his first mistake almost instantly, sitting down at the table of Colin and Terri, part of the custodial crew. Colin is rude, crude, violent and doesn’t like to talk to people- and especially doesn’t want people talking to his beautiful young wife. But for some reason Colin takes David under his rather undesirable wing. This leads to a sort of friendship, and to another mistake- David goes to a racist meeting with Colin, not knowing where he was being taken. Which doesn’t go over well with certain others on the staff. Meanwhile, David starts having vivid hallucinations of a man with a rope and a small boy, hallucinations so real he follows them at one point. There is a love triangle- really more of a love pentagon, really.

Although Graham Joyce is known for his fantasy work, this book has little of the supernatural. While there is a stage magician, the only real magic is the psychic laundry woman. This is more of a coming of age book, with David making pretty much every mistake he can make. It’s also a look back at the end of an era, when the seaside resorts were on the way down, and the beginning of the Punk era. I had sympathy for David; young and more or less innocent, with few people telling him the truth. The characters aren’t particularly deep but they held my interest just fine; I couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to see how the whole thing untangled. 

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A Beautiful Mess Happy Handmade Home, by Elsie Larson & Emma Chapman. Potter Style, 2014

“A Beautiful Mess” is the name of the blog produced by sisters Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman. It’s all about decorating, crafting, cooking and entertaining. It’s Martha Stewart for the hipster aesthetic, basically. It’s always interesting; the blend of retro and future, unfussy and individualized, with a side of cocktails. (Drink carts & cocktail equipment figure in the book) The book is divided in spaces- kitchens, outdoors, bedrooms, etc- with several projects for each space, united in style by the use of bold color and graphics. Because the projects are simple and easy to do, instructions are minimal. 

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Do You Have a Tipped Uterus? 69 Things Your Gynecologist Wishes You Knew, by Melissa Wolf, MD. Morgan James Publishing, 2014

This is one of those books you can read in an hour, but that doesn’t mean it’s fluff. Written by an OB/GYN, it’s full of facts about female reproductive organs and more. Sixty-nine subjects, sixty-nine facts. Most topics are only a couple of pages long. Dr. Wolf covers the embarrassing subjects we’re shy of asking as well as telling how to get the most out of a visit to the doctor’s office. She tells how to make sure you don’t have a long wait at the dr. office: be the first appointment of the day. What to douche with: nothing. Ever. What some of those odd pains are.

I do have to take issue with one of her entries: she says that doctors don’t judge patients for what they do. She and her colleagues may not, but some doctors do judge. I’ve had it happen to me. I’ve been judged for things I wasn’t even doing, and it’s not pleasant. And she takes the Dr. House attitude on patients: everybody lies. If you tell a doctor that you have one drink a day, they will assume you actually have two drinks a day. They are taught to do this. To assume every single patient lies seems rather judgmental to me. Still, there are a lot of good facts in here, especially for young women. 

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Dr. Mutter’s Marvels, by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. Gotham Books, 2014

A lot of people, especially ones with a bit of a macabre turn of mind, have heard of Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum. It’s a medical museum, filled with skeletons, body parts in jars, and engravings of surgeries. But collection was not meant to be some sensationalist tourist stop; Mutter’s collection was for teaching medical students by showing them what diseases looked like in the body so they could recognize it. He felt it was vital that specimens like these be available.

Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter was an amazing man. He became a doctor while young (there wasn’t as much schooling required in that era to become a doctor), studying in France where surgical techniques were far advanced from those in the US. He not only became a remarkable surgeon- he was ambidextrous- but he brought to America the practice of actually washing his hands and tools in between patients and was an early adopter of the use of anesthesia for operations. He performed a lot of reconstructive surgeries on victims of fires and accidents. He convinced the medical college to purchase some rooms that could be used for patient recovery- previously patients were put out in a cart and taken home as soon as the surgery was over. He thought of patients as actual people instead of just the operation performed on them. He instituted a lot of things we take for granted in hospitals today. Sadly, he died young.

The author has consulted many primary sources for this biography. Descriptions of the surgeries Mutter performed are taken from his own writings. It’s not just a biography of Mutter, but in many ways a biography of surgical practices in America. Very interesting and a fast read.

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Marina, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Edebe, 1999; US translation Little, Brown & Co 2014

 

I fell in love with Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s writing when I read ‘The Shadow of the Wind” a few years ago, but I was not aware that he wrote young adult novels, too. This, the first book he wrote back in 1999 but just last year translated into English, is just as wonderful. It’s a tale of gothic horror as well as a coming of age tale, a tale of first love, a tale of death, and a tale of madness.

The story begins in 1980 with the 15 year old narrator being asked if he is Ocar Drai. He is, of course, and he’s been missing for seven days. Fifteen years on, he is ready to tell the story of what happened back then.

Oscar is a student at a boarding school in Barcelona. He is given to taking long walks after class and exploring. One day he finds himself in a run down area, in front of a presumably deserted mansion. But there is music coming from inside, and he enters. A gramophone is playing opera, and he finds a pocket watch on the table. Frightened by the sudden appearance of an old man, he flees, accidentally taking the pocket watch with him. He’s an honest young man, and despite his fear he goes back to the mansion to return the watch. Thus he enters the lives of German Blau and his teen daughter, Marina.

Marina says she has something to show Oscar, and takes him to a cemetery. A heavily veiled woman in black appears and lays a rose on a gravestone. Later they follow her to a collapsing greenhouse where they find not her but some large marionettes that become activated despite, supposedly, no one being there. They have entered the world of Eva Irinova, former singer, and it’s a horrible world of monsters.

What follows is horrifying tale of jealousy, bravery, and greed, but mostly of the desire humans have to cling to life and their wish for their loved ones to do so, too. Zafon gives us a mad scientist who has learned to cheat death but not decay. Zafon’s lush descriptions bring the old parts of Barcelona to life. The characters are incredibly vivid; the brave Inspector Florian, Eva’s friend and protector Claret, and the old doctor who knows what is going on-Dr. Shelley. Who has a daughter named Maria Shelley, which made me giggle a bit, given that there is a fair bit of Frankenstein-type things going on here. There is a lot of tension in the story; Oscar is given only a few times to relax and be happy. It’s one of those books that you want to stay up all night reading because you just can’t stand to wait to see what is going to happen next. 

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The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman. Scribner, 2014

 Hoffman writes books both for adults and for young adults; sometimes I’m not sure which audience a book is meant for- and I mean that as a good thing. This is one of those books.

The two main characters are both young- Coralie is 18 and Eddie not much older- and the book is partly coming of age tale. But, set mainly in 1911 New York, it also features the horrible conditions that factory workers had to deal with every day. The famous Triangle Shirtwaist fire stands so large in the story it is nearly a character itself. Eddie’s story is propelled by the labor conditions; a Russian Orthodox Jew who lost his mother and home in a Cossack attack on the village, he and his tailor father fled to America. Feeling his father is a coward, he runs away from the decrepit room they call home and finds his own way to earn a living, spending some time as an informal investigator, and eventually becoming a photographer.

Coralie is brought up by her father and his maid of all work, home schooled and sheltered from the world in the Museum. The museum houses exotic birds, man made hybrids created from parts of various species like those used by P.T. Barnum, and people who are visibly different from the average: an erudite wolf man completely covered with hair, conjoined twins, a girl born without arms, and the like. Coralie is at home with these people but not with everyday society. Coralie’s father has groomed her to be an exhibit in the Museum; she is born with webbed fingers, he trains her from early childhood to stay submerged in cold water for hours at a time. With a large tank and a silk & bamboo mermaid tail, she’s prime entertainment.

An accidental meeting leads to instant love for Eddie and Coralie, but her father has other plans for her. Not only is her father not the man she thinks he is, but he’s not a person to take no for an answer. And he’s got a lot to hide.

The story switches points of view frequently. Odd numbered chapters are about Coralie, first with a section in first person followed by a section in third person but concentrating on Coralie. Even numbered chapters are told from Eddie’s POV in first person, with a following section in third person. I didn’t have trouble with switching between Coralie and Eddie, but I did find switching from first to third person a  little jarring. There were some rough edges working the Triangle fire into the narrative. The author is known for her magical realism, and with a subject like a museum of the unusual, I thoroughly expected to find that here. But there is no real magic in this one; the exhibits are all easily explainable and the Seer is really basically a private investigator. While I liked this book and it’s definitely worth reading, it’s not one of Hoffman’s best.

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