The Fabergé Secret: A Novel From the Perspective of An Aristocratic Russian Architect

I wouldn't have known about the existence of The Fabergé Secret  by Charles Belfoure if  I hadn't encountered it on Book Sprout.  I had to prioritize this review over a book that I had finished previously because Book Sprout gave me a deadline for posting this review.

 

                                 

The Fabergé eggs that the Tsars of Russia cherished as art , were more than art in this novel.   They became a means of hidden communication.  While I was reading, it occurred to me that too many people had access to these eggs. I don't know why none of the characters seemed to realize this.  The Fabergé secret was too widely shared to really be a secret.  This was bound to get some people into huge trouble. That definitely wouldn't be a surprising development.  The element of suspense in the book was limited.The only question was when it would happen, not if it would happen. 

I did find the protagonist, Dmitri, very sympathetic.   Some readers might not find it credible that he didn't share so many of the prejudices of his class.  He did seem pretty modern in his outlook. Yet I felt that he was believably exposed to differing perspectives.  It was also believable to me that his friend, Tsar Nicholas II, was so hermetically sealed away from the general population that he couldn't transcend his limited way of looking at the world.  

I suspect that it's possible that author Charles Belfoure may not have always researched his portrayals of the Jewish characters.  The most notable example was the Jewish Baron inviting a non-Jewish character who liked challah to a Passover seder saying that there would be plenty of challah.  On Passover all leavened bread like challah would be forbidden.  They would have been eating the unleavened matzoh instead.

The high level conspiracy behind the anti-Jewish pogroms revealed in this novel seemed so similar to the current white supremacist conspiracy to attack Black communities.  Both conspiracies seem so culturally insidious, but neither are inevitable.  I'd like to think that over time there will be so many more people like Dmitri that racist conspiracies will no longer be viable.

                                      

                                 

 

The Anglophile's Notebook: The Life of a Woman Writer

 I haven't reviewed anything here in a long while because I was moving, and didn't have the time. 

 I was asked to review The Anglophile's Notebook, the first novel by Sunday Taylor.  I was expecting it to have more of a central focus on Charlotte Bronte, but it's primarily about fictional protagonist Claire Easton.  Claire intended to write a book about people fascinated with the Brontes and how this obsession impacts their lives. I would be interested in reading about that topic, but The Anglophile's Notebook isn't really about Claire's book.  It's predominately about her life, and the lives of other characters in her orbit.

                                       

 

Claire continued to hold my interest because I felt that we shared some traits and common concerns.  So I was willing to read about  Claire's marriage problems and her personal history even though I found these details unremarkable.

I discovered that Claire and I didn't share artistic tastes. I looked up her favorite painting and wasn't impressed with it.  It was "The Swing" by Jean-Honoré Fragonard which can be seen below.  I suspect it was considered very risqué when Fragonard painted it.

                               

There were characters that were presented as possible villains.  I prefer books without villains that have fully rounded characters who are more developed.  I imagine the intent was to place these individuals under suspicion when a terrible event occurred.  So readers could be less certain about who was responsible. 

I thought this book was competently written with the exception of one scene.   Claire and her sister had a long exchange about their mother.  Since they both knew all this information, they wouldn't have had such a conversation.   This was an awkward means of providing background to the reader.  It would have been more natural  for Claire to have discussed her mother with the man she was dating. I think  it would have been relatively easy to develop a pretext for telling him about things her mother had done.

I did wish that there had been more about the Brontes than about Claire. An old friend of mine used to say "us beggar types cannot be chooser types".  This is another way of saying that readers can't dictate to authors about what they will include in a novel.  Yet a reviewer can state a preference.

 

                                  

 

                                   

Dead on my Feet : A Mystery For A March Meeting

 I had almost reached the end of February.  It was at that point that I realized that I had read no mysteries in February so far. This rose to the top of my mind because the monthly meeting for a mystery discussion group that I attend was approaching.  So I started a mystery from the library and quickly abandoned it for lack of interest.  Then there was a mystery that I had recently downloaded for free from a multi-author mystery giveaway distributed via Book Funnel.  That one suffered the same fate as the library mystery.  

 I thought I had found a solution when I was approved that very day for a mystery from Edelweiss which distributes e-books for free in return for reviews.  This meant I was obligated to finish and review it, or I might not be approved for any books from Edelweiss in the future.  That book was Dead on my Feet by Patricia Broderick.   

                                  

 

Unfortunately, I hadn't finished this third novel in time for the mystery group meeting, but I had reached the milestone of 82% in the Kindle version.  At that point, I felt fairly certain about whodunit and had some conclusive opinions about the characters and plot.    Since finishing it my views haven't changed.

When I spoke to the book club I wasn't mistaken about whodunit, but I only knew who the person was in general.  I actually wasn't  aware that there was more about the individual that needed to be revealed.  The truth was that I didn't know what I didn't know. 

 I have to say that calling the protagonist Nellie Bly ,when the only thing she has in common with the real Nellie Bly was that she is a journalist, annoyed me. There was also a not very believable incident involving a character locked in a trunk, and another incident that I considered over the top.  Finally, since I pretty much knew whodunit at 80% , there wasn't much suspense afterward.  So I'm not a fan of this mystery.  

I have to admit that I'm in a poor mood because I need to move this month, and I never like moving.  Who does?  I might have been more inclined to like this book in other circumstances though I doubt it.

                                       

The Far Away Girl: Blog Tour and Review

This is my first blog tour of  2021.   I agreed to join the tour for The Far Away Girl by Sharon Maas and received a digital ARC for review from the publisher.  The description, cover, author's bio, photo and   associated links below were also provided by the publisher.  I personally checked all the links to make sure that they were valid.

 

                                               

 Description:

She dreamed of finding a new life…

Georgetown, Guyana 1970. Seven-year-old Rita is running wild in her ramshackle white wooden house by the sea, under the indulgent eye of her absent-minded father. Surrounded by her army of stray pets, free to play where she likes and climb the oleander trees, she couldn’t feel more alive.

But then her new stepmother Chandra arrives and the house empties of love and laughter. Rita’s pets are removed, her freedom curtailed, and before long, there’s a new baby sister on the way. There’s no room for Rita anymore.

With her father distracted by his new family, Rita spends more time alone in her bedroom. Desperate to fill up the hollow inside her, she begins to talk to the only photo she has of her mother Cassie, a woman she cannot remember.

Rita has never known what happened to Cassie, a poor farmer’s daughter from the remote Guyanese rainforest. Determined to find the truth, Rita travels to find her mother’s family in an unfamiliar land of shimmering creeks and towering vines. She finds comfort in the loving arms of her grandmother among the flowering shrubs and trees groaning with fruit. But when she discovers the terrible bruising secret that her father kept hidden from her, will she ever be able to feel happiness again?

A beautiful and inspiring story that will steal your heart and open your eyes. Fans of The Secret Life of Bees, The Vanishing Half and The Other Half of Augusta Hope will be captivated by The Far Away Girl.

Author Bio

Sharon Maas was born into a prominent political family in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1951. She was educated in England, Guyana, and, later, Germany. After leaving school, she worked as a trainee reporter with the Guyana Graphic in Georgetown and later wrote feature articles for the Sunday Chronicle as a staff journalist.

Her first novel, Of Marriageable Age, is set in Guyana and India and was published by Harper Collins in 1999. In 2014 she moved to Bookouture, and now has ten novels under her belt. Her books span continents, cultures, and eras. From the sugar plantations of colonial British Guiana in South America, to the French battlefields of World War Two, to the present-day brothels of Mumbai and the rice-fields and villages of South India, Sharon never runs out of stories for the armchair traveler.

                                               

                                                                                                       SHARON MAAS

 https://www.sharonmass.com

https://twitter.com/sharon_maas

 

 MY REVIEW

I  really identified with Rita, the protagonist, in this intense coming of age novel mainly taking place in Guyana. Sharon Maas's portrayal of Rita's persistent search for the truth about the death of the mother she never knew made me feel the sense of loss at the center of her life.

The Far Away Girl isn't all high drama.  I enjoyed finding out about Guyanese customs such as flying kites on Easter Sunday.  I found this 2017 article on the subject in The Guyana Chronicle in which President David Granger stated that kite flying on Easter wasn't done in other parts of the Caribbean. Yet I found another article about other Caribbean nations where there is also a custom of Easter kite flying here. 

There was another character in The Far Away Girl that I liked.  He was Rita's cousin who was nicknamed Dutch.  Dutch became a pilot and flew visitors on wildlife tours.  Once, while flying over an unspoiled landscape, he told the passengers that it was going to be kept that way.  I'm sure the Lenape would have said the same when they were the inhabitants of the island of Manhattan before settlers from Holland colonized it.  I did appreciate that Rita and Dutch both loved the land.  

Here's an image of Kaieteur Falls in Guyana which is mentioned in this novel.

                                             

                             Sorenrisse at English Wikipedia, CC By S.A 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
                

Knowing that the author was born in Guyana made a great deal of difference in the way I viewed The Far Away Girl.  I'd like to thank Sharon Maas for sharing her world with us.

                                                                         

Buy Links

Amazon:  

 http://bit.ly/37AT1r1 

Apple:  

 http://apple.co/3ogBN8d

Kobo: 

  http://bit.ly/3lxsVt9 

Google:  

 http://bit.ly/2JwgEYN

                                               

 

 

 

 

The Sum of Us: Racism Benefits No One

Author Heather McGhee wants us to know that racist policies don't benefit anyone.  That's why she wrote The Sum of Us.  I downloaded it from Net Galley.  I didn't have a chance to start this review until now.  I was way too absorbed by what was happening in politics.  Now let's get back to book reviewing which is what I do on this blog.

                                    

                                

 

This book covers a variety of topics and provides historical perspective on each one.  I considered it thorough and insightful.

McGhee argues that when  racist whites are opposed to public services, it's not because they want smaller government.  It's because of their racism.  They don't want blacks to benefit.

When President Truman proposed government health insurance, 90% of the senior beneficiaries would have been white, but McGhee claims that the idea that any blacks would get health insurance was considered unacceptable.  This caused the introduction of union health benefits which hadn't existed previously. Eventually Medicare came into being twenty years later.

I was fascinated with the history of labor unions included in this book.  The Knights of Labor, founded in 1886 included whites, blacks and women, but in the 1890's  the American Federation of Labor unions didn't allow blacks to join. 

There was also another disturbing development in the 1890's. The National Guard were called out to break strikes. McGhee says that employers were calling the National Guard, but as I suspected it was really governors.  Employers don't have the authority to do that.  They needed the support of their state's governor.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations ,which began in 1935, re-integrated their unions which allowed unions to become more powerful.  When blacks, immigrants or women are excluded from unions, employers can hire these excluded categories of workers as scabs.  Scabs disrupt strikes.  Unions were at their peak during the 1950's.  After the 1950's unions have continuously declined.  This wasn't because of unions excluding people.  It was because employers began to ignore the laws that protected workers.  They illegally fired workers who tried to organize unions, and even shut down entire factories rather than deal with unions that were already in existence.  

There were numerous other developments involving labor organizing that I knew very little about--such as the Fight for $15 which has been racially inclusive.  

I consider voter registration a standard part of the voting process, but Heather McGhee says it began as a voter suppression tactic intended to prevent blacks from voting.   Registration is most difficult for people who move often.  McGhee says this includes the poor who are inaccurately thought to be largely non-white.  Presumably, she's talking about involuntary moves.  As a poor person myself, I've noticed that moving is expensive and I try to move as little as possible.   

McGhee points out that whites say in surveys that they prefer to live in racially integrated neighborhoods, but the overwhelming majority of whites don't.  As a case in point, I grew up in a white suburban neighborhood that my civil rights activist father chose to live in.  As an adult, I've mainly lived in integrated neighborhoods, and no they are not  "bad" neighborhoods.

McGhee also points out that in many localities polluting enterprises were deliberately situated in black neighborhoods, but the white neighborhoods nearby are also polluted.  Pollution doesn't stop at the border of the black neighborhoods.

McGhee concludes that the strength of the United States is in its diversity.  If we capitalize on it, we can become the nation we were meant to be.  For me, this is self-evident. 

                         

                                          

    

The Failures of White Feminism As Observed by Koa Beck

 I admit that as a white woman myself, I didn't wonder why I never encountered non-white women at the feminist meetings that I attended in the early 1980's.  That's when I broke away from my family and started acting independently.  I wasn't comfortable with all the feminist organizations that I found.  In some cases, I would attend one meeting and never come back.  But yes, all the women were white.  I've just finished White Feminism by Koa Beck, and she told me that this was no accident.

                               

Beck reveals in her book that she is a light skinned person of color who has passed for white.  She charges white feminists with being self-centered in their approach to feminism.  They also don't challenge societal institutions, but treat them as a given.  Their priority is achieving success in the political and economic context that men have established.  Once they have realized this goal, they can sit back, and say "I've got mine."  They benefit from the pervasive racism and classism, and don't question them.  Since they are totally immersed in their myopic perspective,  it doesn't even occur to them that women of color have other needs and priorities.

After discussing the problem that women of color have with obtaining child care, Beck launches into an attempt made by a woman named Priya  to work with white women on the issue of child care.   She proposed cooperative daycare without realizing that this wasn't an issue for these upper middle class white women.  They all had nannies.  They made a presentation to management, but it didn't include Priya's  appeal for childcare.  The white women ended up getting what they wanted which was extended maternal leave after giving birth.  I couldn't believe that they didn't even try to go to bat for what Priya needed.  They didn't care about the issue, so as far as they were concerned it didn't matter.  The colossal arrogance of these women was astounding.  

I do have to say that Beck didn't present the complete picture when she portrays the Pankhursts who fought for women's suffrage in England.  She mentions Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel who confirm Beck's view of white feminists with their upper class snobbery.  Yet Emmeline Pankhurst had another daughter named Sylvia who focused on working class women.  Sylvia Pankhurst was actually a socialist.  See my review of a biography of Sylvia Pankhurst.  There have been exceptions among white feminists. 

 It is often said that exceptions prove the rule.  So even though there may be a contemporary white feminist equivalent of Sylvia Pankhurst who is eager to be a genuine ally with lower class women and women of color, the majority of white feminists probably are as Beck depicts them.  White Feminism is a tongue lashing that its targets richly deserve.

                           

 

 

 

 

The Organ Thieves: A Heart Transplant Without Consent From The Black Family Involved

So let me tell you about what happened to an African American family of Richmond, Virginia in 1968. William Tucker's brother Bruce went missing.  He learned that Bruce had been located at the Medical College of Virginia.  He had to actually go there to be told that he was dead, and would need to make funeral arrangements.  This had been difficult for William Tucker because polio had left him unable to walk without crutches.  He didn't find out that Bruce's heart and kidneys were gone until the mortician at the funeral home told him.  How did this happen without the family being informed?  That's the story told in The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones.  It's a non-fiction book about real events.  I found it very powerful.  It's my first five star read of 2021.

                                    

                                                                      

The Organ Thieves gives historical background involving medical schools paying grave robbers to obtain bodies in order to teach students anatomy.    In the Medical College of Virginia during the 19th century no one cared if  they used the bodies of slaves and free Blacks for this purpose.   The Medical College of Virginia even stated in their publicity material that no  White man was ever dissected there.  The deliberate choice of using Black bodies in medical schools also happened in the North. Chip Jones pointed out that medical schools in New York were using the corpses of African Americans as far back as 1787. We know this because of the riot protesting the practice during that year in New York.  Jones said that this may have been the earliest Black Lives Matter protest in the United States. I would add that Black deaths also matter as well as respect for Black burial sites.  By 1884 body snatching by medical schools was illegal.  They were supposed to get permission from families.

 So in 1968, the Medical College of Virginia had committed a crime when they took Bruce Tucker's heart for a heart transplant without getting family permission.   Jones' narrative of events shows how this happened. He quotes from Son of Virginia, the memoir of the Tucker family's lawyer, Doug Wilder.   Wilder claimed that the hospital considered Bruce Tucker a derelict.   Wilder believed that this was an assumption based on racism.  

I thought that The Organ Thieves was very thorough in exposing the roots of medical racism by showing us the history of the theft of Black bodies for medical purposes throughout the history of the United States.  Readers of this book should be outraged, as I was.