Mastering the Art of French Eating Lessons in Food and Love From a Year in Paris
Shelf Awareness for Readers for Tuesday, October 8, 2013
From My Shelf
John Sandford: Thrills, Chills and Wit
I'm a large fan of John Sandford's thrillers, both the Lucas Davenport Prey books and the Virgil Flowers novels. After reading the newest Flowers, Storm Front (Putnam), I had the opportunity to ask Sandford a few questions.
Is he running out of title ideas, after 23 Casualty books and 7 Flowers? No, Sandford said, because Storm Front end came from his editor, Neil Nyren. "I'grand not good at titles--I might become with Virgil Flowers Gets Laid, but Neil might hesitate to consider that... I don't know how Neil finds them; I suspect he'd tell you lot at that place'southward a scientific process, but in reality, he probably sits in his chair and mutters to himself, every bit if he's tasting different varieties of cheese...."
Virgil is a womanizing fisherman who writes for outdoor magazines and Vanity Fair--interesting variations on the former-military-cop-turned-detective trope. Sandford noted, "Most thriller cops accept express life-styles and strong prejudices. In my contact with real cops, I found that was often non the case--they had extensive hobbies or other interests exterior the job." The ii characters, Flowers and Davenport, are quite dissimilar, "a matter of literary engineering: Davenport is very intense and focused; Virgil is laid dorsum to the bespeak that he forgets his gun. Yet their styles overlap, and Virgil'southward overall fashion is just equally effective in immigration crimes equally is Davenport's."
The Flowers books can be dead funny, a bit more the Casualty series. Sandford said that it's for relief: "I have a difficult time wading through a lengthy book that is just one terrible thing after another. I call up better writers effort to portray their characters equally people who might be existent--and real people are all over the place, when information technology comes to what they practice in their daily lives… And even in the most intense jobs, funny things happen."
John Sandford'southward books are eminently enjoyable--characters, tension, plot and wit never let yous downwards. --Marilyn Dahl, editor, Shelf Awareness for Readers
The Writer'due south Life
Monique Brinson Demery: Searching for the Dragon Lady
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| photo: Jessica Tampas Photography | |
Monique Brinson Demery's fascination with Madame Nhu began when, every bit a little girl, she showtime saw Larry Burrow's 1962 iconic photo of her "with piles of black pilus and lacquered finger nails," in a form-plumbing equipment traditional Vietnamese dress, belongings a black .38 pistol--the same image that appears on the cover of Demery'due south biography of the former Starting time Lady of South Vietnam, Finding the Dragon Lady. That initial attraction to Madame Nhu's glamour gradually evolved into an awareness of the trouble attractive, intelligent women married to powerful men still face today: What is the proper fashion of conduct for a political leader's unelected spouse if she refuses to be her husband's "safe" accessory?
Demery received a Primary's caste in East asia Regional Studies from Harvard Academy. Her initial phone interviews with Madame Nhu in 2005 were the first granted to any Westerner in nearly 20 years.
How would you lot describe your friendship with Madame Nhu?
My relationship with Madame Nhu began in 2005 and ended in 2011 when she passed away. It was through conversations and interviews over the phone (in French) and, at the end, through e-mail messages--but nosotros never met in person. Madame Nhu fix elaborate schemes to run into in Paris, "very discreetly," as she put information technology, but she stood me up each time. The only manner I was able to make sense of her alien behavior--saying she wanted to see me and and so staying home--was past sympathizing with how difficult it must have been for Madame Nhu to announced equally a fragile old adult female, or worse, equally an ordinary one. She preferred to remain a mystery.
The iconic image of her is the one on the book's cover, in which she wears a tight-fitting traditional apparel and aims a gun. Tin can you explain why that photo still generates such a powerful effect?
If I knew nil of Madame Nhu and was passing by the volume in a bookstore, I would definitely do a double have--which is certainly the purpose of a provocative cover. That epitome draws people in to the seductive, dangerous epitome of Madame Nhu, but does then by leaning heavily on the Dragon Lady stereotype--a Western construct. My hope is that what is on the inside of the volume peels away that imposed caricature of her and reveals the adult female beneath the image.
Stanley Karnow mentions her décolletage and imperious fashion in his Vietnam volume. Edward Lansdale, more sympathetic, said in an interview that she was a warm, caring adult female "well-trained in all the feminine arts" only underappreciated by her husband and family. What factors contributed to these conflicting, simply ultimately limited, views near Madame Nhu?
Every bit yous correctly point out, the descriptions of Madame Nhu by both Karnow and Lansdale are both oversimplistic and neither one captures the total spectrum of Madame Nhu. I don't want to make the same mistakes. Instead, I really do call up that the best arroyo for me was to put Madame Nhu in her historical context.
The French colonial era was catastrophe, and nationalist sentiment was taking off. What had once been a strict bureaucracy in rural lodge was changing equally it migrated to the cities, and emphasized different values, social change for women was butting heads against traditional gender roles. One great example of an obvious conflict inside Madame Nhu were her social norms--she insisted on French at the dinner table while professing a hatred of the legacy of colonialism and encouraging Vietnamese women to follow her into forging their ain nationalist identity.
Dorsum in the 1960s, even liberal American journalists sounded like traditionalists when they judged Madame Nhu. This reminds me of the printing' ambiguity toward Hillary Clinton during her hubby'south administration. Was the '60s media's judgment based on racial and gender prejudices?
I practise think that the prevailing attitudes in the media that forged Madame Nhu'southward legacy as a Dragon Lady were racist and sexist, although I don't think they fix out to be. Over again, it was a product of the times--and for Americans, Vietnam was so foreign and exotic that the by and large male person media tried very difficult to forcefulness Madame Nhu into a stereotype. Past demonizing Madame Nhu, information technology fabricated the American public confident that she was "other" and that they, the Americans, were the practiced guys and needed to blitz in.
With the publication of Finding the Dragon Lady, exercise you recollect that Madame Nhu volition exist rehabilitated in the public eye?
My purpose in writing this book was not necessarily to rehabilitate or redeem Madame Nhu, but to expose the injustice of how other historians regurgitate the same former Dragon Lady tropes without examining who this powerful adult female really was, and how she made an impact on Vietnamese and American history. I too wanted to personalize the story of the early years of the Vietnam War, and found that Madame Nhu was such a colorful character that she breathed life into the larger and very confusing story of just how we Americans found ourselves enmeshed in a decade of war, and why the legacy of Vietnam haunts usa to this day. --Thuy Dinh, editor, Da Mau magazine
Volume Processed
Books Near Paris; Books That Will Change Your Life
Lisa Appignanesi, author of Paris Requiem, chose her "top 10 books almost Paris" for the Guardian, noting that it "has been a metropolis of retentiveness and myth for me. Oddly angled sights and childhood smells live side past side with that dream city congenital upwardly of the words of novelists and poets."
---
Dutch creative person Dewi van de Klomp created an "astonishing melting bookshelf... that changes shape depending on its contents."
Volume Review
Fiction
The Rosie Project
past Graeme Simsion
Geneticist Don Tillman knows he should accept no trouble finding a mate: "I am thirty-ix years former, tall, fit, and intelligent, with a relatively high status and in a higher place-boilerplate income as an associate professor.... In the animal kingdom, I would succeed in reproducing." This unfortunate statement demonstrates his personality--analytical, logical and largely unable to anticipate or correctly respond to human social behavior. After ane date disaster, Don has an epiphany: Why not develop a exam that will detect his ideal mate scientifically? So begins the Married woman Project but, meanwhile, he meets Miss Completely Incorrect: Rosie. In no fourth dimension, Rosie begins to turn Don's carefully calibrated world on its caput with her spontaneity and joie de vivre. Tin can a gratuitous spirit like Rosie ever run across through Don's pocket protector to the heart underneath? Can Don shed his narrow worldview to recognize his feelings for Rosie?
A subtext of the novel is Don's unsaid Asperger's, as Simsion shows that while Don's eccentricities are non without consequence, the lack of diagnosis or intervention has not kept him from building a successful professional life. Don is different, but not disabled, and while his social missteps and innocent tactlessness drive the story's humor, 1 never gets the sense that Simsion is making fun of Don; rather, he pokes fun at the rest of humanity--irrational decisions, unnecessarily complicated nuances of courting and apparent aversion to punctuality.
While Simsion'due south charming hero is unconventional, expect a traditional romantic comedy with sly nods to flick classics of the genre. Sometimes touching, sometimes idea-provoking and always hilarious, The Rosie Projection is a feel-good novel that, just similar your favorite romantic pic, you'll want to enjoy again and again. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Latah Canton Library District; blogger at Space Reads
Discover: A romantic comedy with a few twists, like genetics research and Asperger's, that is tender and sweetly funny.
Simon & Schuster, $24, hardcover, 9781476729084
Firefly
past Janette Jenkins
In prose alternately tart, cranky, nostalgic and poignant, Janette Jenkins brings the last days of Sir Noël Coward to life in Firefly. The playwright, composer, managing director, actor and singer was known for his wit, flamboyant homosexuality and poise in any circumstance; he defined Englishness.
The novel takes its name from Firefly, Coward's retreat high on a hill in Jamaica, so small that it could not suit an overnight guest--unless he slept with Noël. Farther down the hill was Blue Harbour, Coward's "existent" Jamaican home.
Jenkins fills out Coward'southward concluding years, focusing on a few weeks in the early on 1970s. He was ill much of the time. He had a "weak breast" all his life; smoking incessantly didn't help. He drank also much, ate nothing or all the incorrect things, refused to walk even a fiddling and was, sadly, losing his mental acuity.
His manservant, Patrice, a cheery, 22-year-sometime Jamaican, longs to become to London and become a waiter at the Ritz. In two funny vignettes, Coward invites his former lover, Graham Payn, and Coley, another friend, to dinner and so that Patrice tin "practice silvery service." Alas, a great bargain of practise is needed.
As preparations are underway for the annual trip to Switzerland, it is all Coward can practise to get out of bed, making the rigors of a long trip seem quite beyond him. He reminisces in a waking dream about past glories, events, play openings, his knighthood, lovers and friends.
Firefly is a vivid portrait of a man who lived a full life, in every sense of the give-and-take. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Embankment Book Company, Ore.
Find: In her American debut, British novelist Janette Jenkins re-creates the terminal act of Noël Coward'south life as he reminisces about his loves, his piece of work and his friends.
Europa Editions, $15, paperback, 9781609451400
In Pinelight
past Thomas Rayfiel
At commencement glance, a reader might pass up In Pinelight. Where are the quotation marks? The paragraph breaks? The punctuation? A few pages into Thomas Rayfiel'due south 6th novel, yet, and the rhythm of the narrator'southward soliloquy becomes addictive; information technology feels rude to interrupt his story by closing the book.
Confined to a retirement domicile, Bill relates the story of his life to an unknown narrator. On the surface, it was an uneventful being. He never left his hamlet in upstate New York, but alter came to him. The narration unfolds in a stream of consciousness: "Brown was handsome in a forwards-looking style full of possibilities or so I think. Information technology could all exist colored by what happened subsequently subsequently yes I know my English language three and a one-half years of high school and so I had to go to work but Rebecca what on world are yous asking most her for? Of course I know there'south a boondocks under at that place. When they decided to flood the valley no one objected money was difficult to come by and so."
Neb is a smart man. His stories speak to universal themes as they detail the particulars of life in his piffling town, the tensions between the educated and the working grade, the vacation homes that sprung up for down-land summer people, the friendships, loves and small-boondocks gossip, much of information technology more sophisticated than one might expect, all of information technology offering food for thought. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco
Discover: This stream-of-consciousness novel reveals thoughtful truths through a slice of backwoods 20th-century life.
Triquarterly Books, $18.95, paperback, 9780810152366
The Ice-Cold Heaven
by Mirko Bonne
Ernest Shackleton's trek to Antarctica is legendary. The Endurance became stuck in the ice and the crew wasn't heard from for well-nigh 2 years; that everyone lived is i of the greatest survival stories of all fourth dimension.
German language poet Mirko Bonne's The Ice-Common cold Sky re-creates this incredible adventure from the within. "Cowering downwardly hither for a night and half a day," says the novel's 17-year-sometime Welsh narrator, Merce Blackboro. Merce is a stowaway--the 28th man--on the British barque equally it sets sail from Buenos Aires in October 1914. "You must be one-half starved," Shackleford says when they finally run into. "Fine. Then now y'all're here."
It grows colder. Unrelenting rain turns to snow, painting the ship white: "Every day a slightly thicker coat sticks to the deck." Soon the ship is sheathed in water ice. Information technology grows colder. Blink too long, your eyelids freeze shut. Boiling water freezes before hitting the ground when poured. Eventually, the ice begins to vanquish the ship's hull. The crew tries to strengthen it from within, only to no avail. Then it'due south fourth dimension to get out, with sleds, boats on top, dogs pulling, men pushing, taking with them just 150 of their precious photographs.
We know how the story volition plough out, but Bonne invites u.s. to join this close-knit group of comrades so we tin experience the expedition's inhumane weather condition first-manus. Thus we embark on a well-told, totally engrossing voyage. Bring warm gloves. --Tom Lavoie, quondam publisher
Detect: A stowaway brings new perspective to the familiar story of Shackleton and the coiffure of the Endurance as they struggle to survive in the Antarctic common cold.
Overlook, $27.95, hardcover, 9781590201404
Mystery & Thriller
Truth Kills
by Nanci Rathbun
If you've always wondered what Stephanie Plum would be like with a trivial feel in life under her belt, Nanci Rathbun has the answer. Her debut novel, Truth Kills, introduces readers to sassy librarian turned private investigator Angelina Bonaparte (pronounced Bo-nah-par-tay, thank yous very much). In this beginning book of a planned series, Angelina finds herself in the unenviable position of working for a cheating schmuck accused of murdering his greedy, narcissistic mistress. Going toe to toe with the local cops puts her squarely in the path of danger--and also in the path of Detective Ted Wukowski, who might be the man to break down her walls.
Rathbun injects a lot of depth into a standard romantic mystery story. Her heroine is flawed and complex, her plot perfectly constructed to bring out all of the facets she's created. Angelina is surrounded by extreme personalities that play off and against each other to punctuate the risks in adhering too closely to a system of absolutes. From the militant members of an extremist right-wing religious group to the heroine's securely traditional (and thus regrettably sexist) Sicilian father, Rathbun populates her novel with people who can't or won't bend and ultimately endure for it. In the mercurial Angelina, rigid but in her refusal to compromise herself, nonetheless, she shows us the many perks of flexibility. For mystery lovers, or fans of romantic suspense, Nanci Rathbun is 1 to lookout man. --Judie Evans, librarian
Notice: A new mystery series introduces a feisty and mercurial heroine with biting wit, keen audacity and compelling vulnerability.
Cozy Cat Printing, $14.95, paperback, 9781939816139
Biography & Memoir
Mastering the Fine art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris
by Ann Mah
Ann Mah and her diplomat hubby, Calvin, lived in New York, Beijing and Washington, D.C., during the few years they'd been married. And then, in 2008, Calvin got a dream posting: 3 years in Paris. Ecstatically, they packed their belongings, but to accept Calvin sent onward for a year's posting in Baghdad. Because of the dangers at that place, Ann wasn't allowed to accompany him, and found herself alone in Paris.
Similar Julia Child, another diplomat'due south wife, Ann decided to spend her year learning about the history of French cuisine by taking a series of excursions around France in search of famous regional dishes. She devours crêpes in Brittany, boeuf bourguignon in Burgundy, fondue in Haute-Savoie, soupe au pistou in Provence.
Along the fashion, Mah learns how hard it is to live lone, perfects her French, starts to make friends and creates a solid career of her ain (to escape the feeling that she's but following Calvin around the globe).
Mastering the Art of French Eating is brimming-total of delicious recipes, luscious descriptions of the French countryside and fascinating glimpses into Ann'due south groundwork and personal life. Her Chinese-American perspective on French civilisation makes for interesting insights, and her love of cooking and food shine through the pages of the book. Armchair travelers and foodies alike will enjoy Mastering the Art of French Eating. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm
Discover: A twelvemonth in Paris leads to profound discoveries--both personal and culinary.
Pamela Dorman/Penguin, $25.95, hardcover, 9780670025992
Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Madame Nhu
by Monique Brinson Demery
Fifty years ago, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, National Assembly representative and sis-in-law of South Viet Nam'south chaste President Ngo Dinh Diem, was a controversial figure who both fascinated and repelled the American press. Named Tran Le Xuan, or "Beautiful Spring" by her parents, she became known in the W every bit "the Dragon Lady," an attracting but treacherous femme fatale whose infamous "monk barbecue" argument following a Buddhist bonze's self-immolation triggered the U.S.'s deeper involvement in the Vietnam War and its eventual loss in April 1975.
After the U.S.-backed 1963 coup that killed Diem and her married man, Madame Nhu spent many years in obscurity, until 2005 when Monique Demery, a young scholar with an involvement in Vietnam, decided to runway her downwards. Demery's persistence helped her to locate the elusive Madame Nhu, who created elaborate cat-and-mouse schemes for their purported meetings merely stood Demery up each time. They nevertheless formed a half dozen-year friendship during which Demery succeeded in calling forth, via telephone and eastward-mail conversations, poignant remembrances from Nhu, until the latter's death in April 2011. In Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Madame Nhu, Demery paints Nhu as thoughtful, passionate and perennially embattled: a plucky teen who chose the role of the evil stepmother "for its magnificent potential" in a school's ballet performance of Snow White; a young mother fiercely protective of her infant daughter during a Communist forced march; a reformer critical of gender inequality yet whose strident ways alienated her from the very women whom she wished to save. --Thuy Dinh, editor, Da Mau magazine
Discover: A lively, complex portrait of a adult female long demonized as the Dragon Lady.
PublicAffairs, $26.99, hardcover, 9781610392815
Jim Henson: The Biography
by Brian Jay Jones
Jim Henson died at the age of 54 in May 1990, leaving a vast legacy of warm, joyful puppetry that influences the world to this day. Brian Jay Jones's Jim Henson: The Biography tells the story of Henson's life, starting with his upbringing in Greenville, Miss., his early career in children's idiot box and his rise to fame.
Henson created the Muppets used on Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock. He spent years pitching The Muppet Show to American television networks, somewhen heading to the U.k. to produce it. Using the prove's international success in syndication every bit a springboard, The Muppet Movie hit theaters in 1979 to rave reviews and big box office. His afterward, more than experimental films, like The Nighttime Crystal and Labyrinth, weren't every bit well received initially, simply have become classics.
What is most telling throughout Jones's biography is how much Henson loved what he did. His family, his union and his company all took a back seat to his genuine enjoyment of the work involved in bringing puppets to life onscreen. Not one of the people Jones quotes has a bad give-and-take to say near Henson, noting his gentleness and charm throughout.
Jim Henson: The Biography feels comprehensive without bogging downwards; information technology will continue readers turning pages and enjoying every scene from Henson's life. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance author and editor
Detect: The story of a homo who, with the help of his puppets, dreamed the world to a better place.
Ballantine, $35, hardcover, 9780345526113
Essays & Criticism
The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You
past Ella Berthoud, Susan Elderkin
Whatever bibliophile would rejoice upon discovering a re-create of The Novel Cure. This delightfully unusual cocky-help book prescribes cures for common ailments including Breaking Upwards, Being a Coward, Net Addiction, Not Taking Enough Risks, Being Seventysomething and Tonsillitis. Merely the briskly applied (and sometimes quite funny) advice from Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin is just a prelude to their "prescriptions" of novels to help the reader feel better about his or her dilemma.
For each recommendation, Berthoud and Elderkin share a brief synopsis of the novel in question,explaining why it relates to the ailment at mitt. Some ailments, like Fear of Commitment, arm-twist only one proffer (José Saramago's Blindness), while Not Enough Orgasms claim 16 recommendations, ranging from Flowers in the Attic to Fingersmith.
Vanity Fair is prescribed as a cure for Social Climbing, the audiobook version of Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance to assist with Road Rage. A very few ailments, such as Reading-Induced Loneliness, don't prompt specific novel recommendations, merely rather suggestions for how to alter ane's reading habits (read in company!).
Berthoud and Elderkin have created a book that can be savored in snippets or devoured in a sitting. Full of hundreds of keen recommendations, The Novel Cure is a welcome respond to the perennial question: "What should I read next?" --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm
Discover: An enchanting look at how to cure common ailments past reading novels.
Penguin Press, $26.95, hardcover, 9781594205163
Performing Arts
Drama High: The Incredible Truthful Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Boondocks, and the Magic of Theater
by Michael Sokolove
Touted every bit the ideal suburb when it was built, Levittown, Pa., is today a depressed town, an unlikely destination for top Broadway producers. In the theater plan at Harry Southward. Truman High School, though, generations of students accept flourished under the tutelage of director Lou Volpe.
Over iv decades, Volpe's productions have drawn such acclamation the school has get a regular testing basis for high school versions of such shows as Les Misérables, Hire and Bound Awakening. Sokolove (The Ticket Out) returns to his hometown to observe Volpe in action, chronicling the theater plan's growth as he watches the students develop several challenging, powerful shows.
Sokolove mixes biography with memoir, journalism with social commentary, every bit he interviews Volpe and his students and attends dozens of rehearsals. Volpe expects total commitment from his students: the atmosphere of the theater program is one of kindness, professionalism and fanatical attention to particular. Offstage relationships among bandage members, while sometimes complicated, are never allowed to interfere with a show.
The economic and social realities of life in Levittown are rarely far from Sokolove'southward mind. As a Levittown native who "got out," he understands how difficult it may exist for these students to escape the confines of their hometown--and the potential of the theater program to open their eyes to a bigger earth.
Clear-eyed, thoroughly researched and quietly joyful, Drama High is a testament to Lou Volpe's dedication and to the transformative power of his dearest stage. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Discover: The story of an extraordinary teacher who transformed the high school theater program in a struggling Pennsylvania town.
Riverhead, $27.95, hardcover, 9781594488221
Children's & Young Adult
The Snatchabook
by Helen Docherty, illus. by Thomas Docherty
This whodunit with an uplifting ending will appeal to fans of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Instead of a villain who makes off with the fixings of the flavor, this i steals stories from the shelves as children sleep. While Cindy-Lou Who defenseless the Grinch in the act, here Eliza Brownish, an industrious bunny, corners the Snatchabook.
The rhyme scheme and meter, besides, repeat Seuss's: "In every house,/ in every bed,/ a bedtime book/ was existence read." Charming cutaway views of scenes inside tree trunks and hugger-mugger burrows testify animals snuggled upward with their little ones, reading stories nether a total moon. The annoy family unit reads "tales of dragons, spitting flames," with an open folio depicting a dragon in hot pursuit of a sword-wielding badger hero. Pirate and princess stories delight the owl and bunny families, and children will recognize a bunny toting a basket and wearing a red cape as Trivial Red Riding Hood in Eliza Brown's book. That is, earlier someone (or something) snatches her storybook correct out from under her. Other critters' books disappear, also, and "Eliza Brown, at Number Three,/ was dandy to solve the mystery."
When she does catch him, the Snatchabook is repentant: "Eliza sighed. He looked so sad./ If he just had a mom or dad/ to read him stories every night--/ well, then he might acquit all correct!" Eliza has a remedy for that, too, only first the Snatchabook must fix things correct. Children will revel in the message that bedtime reading is a ritual to be revered and will forgive the Snatchabook for his wish to share in it. --Jennifer One thousand. Dark-brown, children's editor, Shelf Sensation
Observe: A whodunit features bedtime reading as a ritual to exist revered, and a thief who only wants to share in the fun.
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, $16.99, hardcover, 32p., ages three-vi, 9781402290824
How to Beloved
by Katie Cotugno
Debut author Katie Cotugno's powerful love story effectively alternates "Before" and "After" chapters. She doesn't play her entire hand immediately, always managing to reveal new information that seamlessly ties into the story's crux when the time is right.
Reena Montero, now nineteen, had finally gotten used to life without Sawyer LeGrande, when he returns to their Florida hometown after a 3-year disappearance. In his absence, Reena gave birth and raised their daughter, Hannah, and has rebounded with a new young man, Aaron. But Sawyer's reappearance revives feelings Reena had buried and introduces confusion equally to what's best for herself and her daughter. The "Before" capacity offer readers the take a chance to see why Reena fell in honey with Sawyer, even when a tragedy threatens to carve up them. Reena, who narrates, was preparing to graduate early to major in travel writing at Northwestern, neatly playing into the volume's overarching themes of belonging. The wrenching "After" sequence follows Reena as she struggles to forgive the boy she once idea was so special and mature that he must've "already lived a thousand dissimilar lives." Cotugno crafts many touching moments between these young parents and their daughter.
Even with an unexpected pregnancy, the novel avoids preachy territory. Cortugno does non dismiss the struggles; instead, the once naïve Reena takes charge, grows up and makes mistakes. Readers volition want more from this fresh new vocalisation. --Adam Silvera, reviewer and children's bookseller
Discover: Teen parents explore a second adventure at love after three years apart.
Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, $17.99, hardcover, 400p., ages 14-up, 9780062216359
Source: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers/2013-10-08/mastering_the_art_of_french_eating:_lessons_in_food_and_love_from_a_year_in_paris.html
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