The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)

That's not quite the book I own. You see, mine has the word 'bestseller' bannered across the top, a word that made me stay away from this intriguing read for so long. I know it sounds elitist, but I guess I just don't like being part of the hype. Until Tuesday came, and I was looking at five hours doing nothing at the airport save for breathing (I forgot to grab some reading material from my own shelves). So Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale became mine, and I didn't regret the impulse buy at all -- 'bestseller' claim notwithstanding.

Margaret Lea is a bookkeeper and an amateur biographer who is asked to write the elusive life story of Vida Winter, an acclaimed novelist. Ms. Winter has had several biographies published, none of them real. Now faced with illness and a haunting desire ('Tell me the truth,' a young man once implores her, a request she doesn't grant), Ms. Winters hopes to finally exorcise the ghosts of her past via a written reckoning. Ms. Setterfield's protagonist, Margaret, is not without her own ghosts, and

What I like most about The Thirteenth Tale is how nothing is wasted in the flashbacks that slowly reveal Ms. Winters' story. They do more than shed light on the characters; they are all important plot points. (Wow. That sounds overly simplistic. Hooray, bluntness.) Where other authors dwell on subplots to enrich the mood and heighten the emotion (a practice I certainly don't frown upon), Ms. Setterfield commands each scene to concentrate on the main story, which really works in this case. I also liked how the time frame was deliberately vague; there are clues, of course, but it added to the mysterious air the way I couldn't quite put my finger on the era.

The story plays up the strangeness of twins, and this certainly made me take a step back from the characters in Ms. Winters' past. I doubt the readers were truly meant to empathize with them in the first place, drawn the way they were as players in a gothic tale. But Ms. Winters' narration, as well as Margaret's involvement with the matter and her personal struggles, gives the events a human touch, and you begin to feel the bereavement with which these women have not come to terms.

I had spent more than five hours at the airport plus another three on the plane, and still I kept reading. I was excited to start my personal adventure in a different country, and still I kept reading. For a gothic mystery, The Thirteenth Tale is heavy and engaging. I couldn't resist the pull of the pages, and I couldn't guess how it was going to end. For a drama, it has just fallen short of moving me to tears, but it still manages to depict the bonds of sisterhood -- and its pains and losses and obsessions.

The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle)

Nothing about my recent run of good fortune could have prepared me for the attending joy that followed my sighting of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn. Say what you will about heroic and traditional fantasy, but The Last Unicorn remains, for me, one of the must-read books of the genre.

Where one expects a happily-ever-after in a familiar medieval world, Mr. Beagle instead fashions a not-so-traditional tale. Schmendrick the magician frees the last unicorn from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival and the two set off to find what has happened to the other unicorns. Their search leads them to King Haggard, and to help the unicorn from sharing the same fate as the others of her kind, Schmendrick transforms her into a woman. It is as a woman that she discovers other magic that exists in the world--magic like love, and courage, and sacrifice.

Schmendrick's act eventually leads the unicorn, now known as the Lady Amalthea, to declare that 'I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do (p. 207).' But no one can claim that it was pure folly, for the change advents an inordinate amount of good as well. It is with this dynamic of regret and consequence that Mr. Beagle injects bittersweet realism into his fantasy, resulting in a tale over which young girls may swoon tragically and about which adults may nod sagely: "I've been there, I know that, I am no hero but I do." (Is realism always to be bittersweet? We have heroes and magicians and ex-unicorns who would probably attest to that.)

I grew up reciting lines from The Last Unicorn as my mantra. 'Take me with you,' Schmendrick implores the unicorn, 'for laughs, for luck, for the unknown (p. 44),' and she does. I came on that journey so many years ago, and as I close my new copy, I'm glad that I've never really left the path. Mr. Beagle's prose is as familiar as the dreams we inhabit, and never a stranger.

The Truth-Teller's Tale (Sharon Shinn)

Twin sisters Adele and Eleda of the palindromic names are far from having identical personalities. But faster than you can say "Sweet Valley," The Truth-Teller's Tale takes you to the medieval countryside where Edela is a Truth-Teller, who is compelled to tell the truth when asked. Her sister Adele, on the other hand, is a Secret-Keeper, never betrays anything she hears in confidence. Not exactly Sweet Valley fare.

Young readers may find the plot likeable enough, despite the way it moves to a predictable denoument. Even with the additional complications brought by forbidden romances, arranged marriages, and mistaken identities, Truth-Teller offers no major surprises. But I find that its appeal lies in this simplicity. At the heart of it, Truth-Teller is a tale of two sisters growing up into their own women, making decisions on their own, and celebrating their differences. Another plus is that the rural setting of Merendon and their customs are well-realized, so reading this is a truly relaxing experience. All you'll need is a wide meadow and a river that runs through it. I only wish that the novel had dealt more with the twins' struggling with their roles, especially at the beginning, when they were only starting to come into their own. True, the moral dilemma emerged towards the climax, but I'm of an opinion that readers would relate to the twins more if they showed us their vulnerability early on.

Fans of Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl and Cynthia Voigt's Jackaroo may want to give Truth-Teller a try. It's not as action-packed as the other books, but all three emanate with the same spirit of discovery and coming-of-age in a medieval world.

Interlude: Sentimentality.

For a span of nearly two weeks, I have inhabited the pockets of a dream called Proposal Daisakusen, an 11-episode Japanese drama. My tears come easily, despite all my best intentions, but this time, they burst right on cue with every single episode. That effing dorama had my number. Called every night, and then some.

Here's to coffee milk, second chances, and the lives we leave unlived.

The Etched City (KJ Bishop)

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I wanted my own Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. They were bright pink and pretty and nearly every girl had them, but they were really too expensive for my humble allowance. But because I still wished to be part of the herd, I meh-ed until my parents gave in--only to realize that no amount of trapping or keeping was going to save my school stuff from my supreme disorganization. And that I hated bright pink. I suppose that should have made me learn my lesson that not everything I wanted was actually right for me. Sadly, I'm slow on the uptake.

When I put down my copy of The Etched City, all I could think about was that Trapper Keeper. You see, for years now, I thought I wanted to go to Ashamoil and I ended up wishing I had taken the wrong train.

KJ Bishop's The Etched City chronicles the lives of two ex-revolutionaries looking for a second chance: Gwynn the merciless, and Raule, the doctor who rues the conscience she has lost long ago. After a brief and tenuous alliance as they journey through the Copper County, they reach Ashamoil and part ways.

Let's get one thing clear before I proceed. I admire Ms. Bishop's ability to create the grandiose yet crumbling city of Ashamoil, where the decadent and the grotesque carve out their lives. But the metaphysical talk was sorely lost on me. See, I want to be fair to Ms. Bishop by reminding you that I am likely not her audience, so anything you read here should not be taken as gospel truth. But I also want to be fair to readers who might want more fantasy than philosophy by warning you about this bit beforehand.

Proceeding. When the characters find themselves in Ashamoil, it doesn't take me long to fall out of like with the book. (I must be crazy. The book's well-received. It was nominated for the 2004 World Fantasy Awards.) Still, I found Gwynn one-dimensional and sadly, Raule doesn't get half the attention that Gwynn does. Gwynn is enamored by the engraver, Beth Constanzin, who inducts him into the surreal within Ashamoil. Beth may be wise and temptingly enigmatic, but I'm still not hooked by the story. It is Beth, though, who utters one of my favorite lines from the book: 'With inspiration and passion, and perhaps a little tragedy. Or perhaps cynically, in back rooms, behind closed doors (p. 157),' she says when asked of her art. I suppose I can never really dislike artists.

Set-up, set-up, set-up, and nearly twenty chapters later, rising action. I meandered along with the languid narration only to reach a climax and resolution that I thought was too deus ex machina. I got off the train. While I rejoice that writers such as Ms. Bishop give us more than the Tolkien fare, it saddens me that we automatically assume that fantasy novels that still have their share of knights and wizards are bad. At the end of the day, all I really want from a fantasy novel--or anything, for that matter, even Trapper Keepers--is one that will leave me with the magic of satisfaction.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Lauren Willig)

Procrastination, thy name is Chris. I had finished Lauren Willig's The History of the Pink Carnation and The Masque of the Black Tulip in less than a day since I borrowed them from Oz a few weeks back, but I was too preoccupied with other matters (like the naming of dogs and the purchasing of blue hair dye) to write. I suppose some books can wait to be reviewed. But here, my first historical romance review. Reviews, I mean.

I started out with Ms. Willig's Pink Carnation only because it's logical to begin with the first book in any trilogy, even if it was the plot of the second book that I liked better. Still, first things first. Meg Cabot calls the book a "genre-bending read" since it has two love stories in one. Not quite genre-bending in my book (nor highly original: think Possession, The Conjurer's Bird or, if you want to stick to the historical romance genre, Remembrance), but still very much worth the read if you like this sort of thing. And I do. So, yay.

Pink Carnation introduces us to Eloise Kelly, who is England to finish her dissertation on aristocratic espionage. Research, research, meets descendant of one of her topics, earns access to private journals, meets dashing but snooty grandson, sparks. Anyway, she learns about the identity of the Pink Carnation via the letters of Amy Balcourt, who wants to join the league of aristocratic spies (not because it was fashionable at that time). Amy meets the dashing Purple Gentian, meets his alter-ego Lord Richard Selwick, sparks. Also, they foil Napoleon's plans to invade England. See, I have no qualms of spoiling it all this way because we all know how these things end anyway. But more importantly, the book also introduces us to Richard's sister Henrietta, and his best friend Miles Dorrington.

Which brings us to Ms. Willig's Black Tulip. I liked Pink Carnation fair enough, but it wasn't outstandingly memorable. I must confess that I read the genre for the romance, not for its historical accuracy, so I do look for something unique about the main pair. In Pink Carnation's case, I was unforgivingly comparing it to Jude Deveraux's The Raider, whose characters, I thought, had more charm and appeal.

But Black Tulip is one of the very few romance novels I've ever read that featured a pair who were actually friends--and that in itself is memorable. It convincingly chronicles how Henrietta and Miles grow from childhood friends to lovers amidst the spying and the double-dealing going on. They argue, they get jealous, they kiss, they get confused. Wonderful pair, rerally. True, Pink Carnation had more of the spy stuff, but inevitably, it was towards Miles and Hen's tandem that I gravitated. My only (tiny) complaint about Black Tulip was that it had more of Eloise and Colin (the said dashing yet snooty grandson, who by this time isn't at all snooty, but of course we knew that). I guess I just wanted more Miles and Hen.

Despite my complaints, Ms. Willig writes fine historical romances. She shies away from the simpering female stereotype so common in this genre and manages to create situations where you don't question why her heroines don't always follow what society expects of them. And when it comes to historical accuracy, I don't think I'll be second-guessing Ms. Willig, who is a candidate for a PhD in history at Harvard. I could, you know, read up on this interesting period, but like i said: procrastination.

Saffron and Brimstone (Elizabeth Hand)

Skinny came bearing gifts. In one afternoon, I found myself the unexpected owner of KJ Bishop's The Etched City, Justina Robson's Living Next-Door to the God of Love, and Elizabeth Hand's Saffron and Brimstone.

I first saw Ms. Hand's short story collection at a local bookstore and was admittedly drawn by the reviews. Contemporary fantasy with a markedly feminine tone? Sold! But I was strapped for cash at that time and never found the book again. Thankfully, Skinny stepped in to buy me a copy in Singapore, and I tore into as soon as we parted.

Ms. Hand's gentle voice and disciplined eye made me breeze through "Cleopatra Brimstone," which I found intriguingly horrifying, though the outcome was not completely unexpected. Her "Pavane for a Prince of Air" struck a more personal chord with me as it dealt with the pain of loss, speaking of 'the impossible bargains I made at three o' clock in the morning with the pagan deities flitting about the room: what I would give up to save him, which digits, which hand, which leg; eyesight, the power of speech, an ear; two; my tongue (p 73-74).' I was beginning to like Ms. Hand more and more, even if I wasn't taking to "The Least Trumps" and "Wonderwall" well.

But it was The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations that kept me tethered to her engaging prose. Here, she speaks of eternal nymphs and muses, of what has been lost, of what has been forgotten. "Kronia" is my favorite of the quartet, with its simple flavor yet somehow wonderfully disjointed narrative. It has a certain cadence that makes reading it out loud a lovely exercise.

Fans of gritty spec fic may find Ms. Hand's kind of fantasy almost vulnerable, but there is a strength in the way she weaves her words that makes you believe that there is true magic here.

The Crimson Labyrinth (Yusuke Kishi)

Mr. Kishi actually tells you how his The Crimson Labyrinth will end. I had time to listen to him while I waited to board my flight from Kalibo, and kept on reading 26,000 feet in the air. Given the circumstances, I can't pinpoint why I couldn't put the book down: either it was really good or I just didn't want to spend two good hours doing nothing.

Or better yet, it was fairly decent and reading it was far from a waste of my time. Yeah. That must be it.

The Crimson Labyrinth, translated by Masami Isetani and Camellia Nieh, benefits from Mr. Kishi's almost instructional and extremely expository manner, which clearly depicts the unforgiving setting of this Battle Royale-meets-Lord of the Flies thriller. It's a psychological study peppered with an idiot's guide to the Australian outback. Very informative--even fun.

I didn't care much for the protagonist, though. Fujiki Yoshihiko is a forty-year old ex-broker down on his luck, but I feel that his is the type of personality that can be easily replaced by a thirty-year old schoolteacher or a mid-twenties recovering heroin addict and the story would still move. The story, after all, does not invest in him as much as it does on the whole plot, which is exciting enough if you try not to guess what comes next. Granted, that last twist was something I didn't completely predict, and I give Mr. Kishi major points for that.

The story is tight and well-paced, awarding the reader a glimpse of the fear and paranoia that would beset any unexpected contestant in a grisly reality show. Mr. Kishi has certainly gone to great lengths laying out how this weird game will play out, from the Pocket Game Kids to the checkpoints and the strange tandem of Platy and Lucifer. I suppose if I were in Fujiki's shoes, I really wouldn't last more than five hours in a game like this, so it was an education, in a way.

So Labyrinth was a bit predictable, yes, but in the end, it was still satisfying. Kept me turning the page. Convinced me that I was seeing all this unfold before my eyes. RPG was never this nightmarishly fun.

Interlude: Weirdness.

My lovely -- and newly-wed -- friend, Frances, just tagged me to play this Six Weird Things About You game. But since my little blog here is all about reading, I'm going to improvise a bit and limit my quirks to those that deal with books. Heaven knows I have enough weirdness about me.

Rules: Just cut and paste if you decide to participate in the tagging game. Each player of this game starts off by giving six weird things about themselves. People who get tagged need to write in a blog of their own six weird things as well as state the rules clearly. In the end, you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names. After you do that, leave them each a comment letting them know you tagged them and to read your blog.

Anyway, six weird things:
1. I used to eat my books.
It was a high-fiber diet. I'd unconsciously tear out dog-eared portions and eat them. The older books tasted better. I know, I know -- my poor books! You should see my copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I stopped some time around high school. Maybe I learned something from Etiquette class.

2. I keep books in my bathroom.
I have a narrow glass shelf where I place my toiletries and a steady rotation of books to keep me company. It's fun to reread stuff while you're immobile. Last ones that were there before the shelf collapsed where China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and Jude Deveraux's The Raider (oooh, wicked). Maybe a lot of you won't find this too weird since you prolly do it, too.

3. My bookshelves are genre-coordinated.
To my bed's right are my fantasy and sci-fi books (my biggest collection at four to five rows), with two rows dedicated to mystery novels. Perry Mason has to sleep beside me. To the left are the young adult and children's fiction. On the shelves beside that are my romance novels. The shelves right next to the door hold the classics and general fiction, where Asian writers have a row to themselves. I used to have a small space for my manga, but they've threatened war if they weren't allowed to expand their territory.

4. I buy multiple copies of the same books just for the covers.
I wouldn't call myself a collector, though, because I'm not anal about getting every edition in existence. But I do like having my series in the same edition. I have four editions of the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy: 1)TSR's 1994 ed; 2) WotC's 2000 ed; 3) WotC's paperback annotated chronicles, and 4) the Special Collector's Edition (because an embossed leather cover and gilt-edged pages deserve title caps). And yes, I won't be ashamed to admit that I got the Wizards of the Coast edition because I thought Tasslehoff Burrfoot looked mighty fine on that cover.

5. I read while walking. Or should that be 'I walk while reading'?
I did that a lot back in high school and even when our agency was located along Ayala Ave. It's easy to do when you have a long stretch of sidewalk before you. Now that we moved offices to Gamboa St., I have a harder time navigating the walk. I try to do Sudoku puzzles instead.

6. I like smelling books.
Okay, maybe not that weird, but I was at a loss at what else to put. No other book-/reading-related quirk comes to mind. :P


There! Tagging Claire and Arvin, Tina, Didi, Kamelle, and Eman, if you're up to it.

The Giant's House (Elizabeth McCracken)

I like the idea of librarians; unfortunately, I have never known a librarian that I really liked. Sure, they were pleasant enough, and helpful enough, and sympathetic enough to a first grader who wanted to find out who Nancy Drew was because she was being bullied by second graders for not knowing. I always thought that the books that surrounded them would lend them some of their magic -- together and by association. But the librarians I knew have been far from magical.

Peggy Cort from Elizabeth McCracken’s The Giant's House has no delusions of being magical, either. She knows she is just a small-town librarian, reserved, withdrawn. At twenty-six, though, she meets a remarkably tall eleven-year old, and under these ordinary circumstances emerges Ms. McCracken's National Book Award Finalist.

Ms. McCracken pens a woman's loneliness with much familiarity. 'I loved him because I discovered that day, after years of practice, I had a talent for it (p. 89),' she lets Peggy narrate, as her odd friendship with the brilliant and sensitive giant, James Carlson Sweatt slowly develops into something more. The story takes place over a span of some nine, ten years so no, it's not as offensive as it sounds. The boy grows legal and reaches eight foot seven. There is no pedophilia. There is a lot of crying in the end, mostly from me.

Anyway, back to loneliness. Peggy Cort is a study in quiet desperation, although I wouldn’t really say that it is desperation that leads her to love a boy fifteen years younger than she is. She can admit to anyone that her life 'is a small, hesitant thing (p. 281).' But the advent of James opens it to more joy and more sorrow that she ever anticipated, and the wake of James leaves her to an amazement 'the way a child is amazed to discover, holding his thumb to his eye, that he can blot out a mountain (p. 282).' Thirty-five now, and still an innocent, our Ms. Cort.

Forgive me if I find the other characters a little less striking. Even adorably awkward James, memorable mostly for his height and very little else. He is very sweet though, and sensitive for a boy who has come to terms with his own freakishness and mortality at a young age; still, these traits alone do not win him places in the literary hall of unforgettable characters. I loved how Ms. McCracken imagined him up, though, placed him in the middle of a library so a spinster librarian would catalogue him into her life.

But maybe this is where the force of Ms. McCracken's writing comes from. She writes of ordinary people (yes, even in James the Giant's case), with everyday fears and hungers and manages to find the poetry of the mundane. True, readers who want epic romances or magical realism may not find that encouraging. But while The Giant's House might not be for everyone, I'd still highly recommend it. It is a carefully-paced and well-conceived look into an unconventional romance that isn't really as strange as it seems.

Procrastination.

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing - Pliny the Younger


Certain invetabilities carry with them an air of fatalism, especially on days like this. Anyway, I haven't been entirely unproductive with my reading list. On the nightstand: The Conjurer's Bird by Martin Davies, The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi, Mr. Thundermug by Cornelius Medvei, among others.

Size 14 is Not Fat Either (Meg Cabot)

While my friend Skinny takes on M. John Harrison, I say hello to Meg Cabot. So I need brain candy.

Meg is seriously fun. When she's good, that is. I loved her The Boy Next Door and am a fan of her Mediator series. Size 14 is actually the second book to her Heather Wells mysteries, whose initial offering, Size 12 is Not Fat, was something I quite enjoyed. Heather Wells is a pop star has-been turned resident hall assistant with a penchant for putting her nose into other peoples' business. Who is now a Size 12! And lives with a gorgeous PI! Well, not live live, seeing as he's her landlord, but well. A girl can dream. The mystery is fun, the romance infectuous, and Heather engaging.

Sadly, the new book makes Heather two sizes bigger and two notches more boring. It doesn't carry Meg's usual girlish charm at all. The mystery was a bit predictable. The romance aspect was non-existent. The only bright spot in the whole book is Heather's resident, Gavin, a loud yet sweet college student who has an adorable crush on her. Gavin comes alive under Meg's writing, which is a good thing because my other favorite characters (like Cooper, the gorgeous dick), felt like walking corpses.

Oh, Meg, Meg, Meg. If you're writing a mystery-romance, and need to sacrifice the romance for the mystery, then give me a damn good mystery, please! I love Heather and will still continue to read about her, but I do hope she takes on more interesting cases after this. I read chick lit for fun, but if that will elude me, then... hand me my Orhan Pamuk. I'm off the brain candy for now.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Haruki Murakami)

I suppose it would be easier to blame work for my lack of updates, but the nobler thing would be to admit that I've been too lazy. Mr. Murakami tore me out of that funk. I've been a fan since Sputnik Sweetheart, and it would be such a shame to let his latest short story collection go by without paying homage to it.

I've actually read two of the stories featured in this collection. "Birthday Girl" is included in Birthday Stories, which he edited, while "A Shinagawa Monkey" is something I came across in a fairly recent issue of the New Yorker. The rest of his collection came as a pleasant discovery. In Blind Willow, Mr. Murakami still writes with his delicious mix of the real and the surreal, using man-eating cats as a jump-off point to explore an adulterous affair or taking a quiet look at the life of a man who used to talk as if reciting poetry. Of these, though, my favorites are "Where I'm Likely to Find It," about an investigator hired to look for a missing husband, and "The Kidney-Shaped Stone that Moves Every Day," which theorizes that of all the women that a man meets in his life, there are only three who will have any real meaning for him.

While his stories can be quite unexpected, Mr. Murakami's graceful writing is a constant. There is something more reserved about Blind Willow, though, than his after the quake or The Elephant Vanishes, and in hindsight, it was this quiet storytelling that I enjoyed most. I'm a weird short story reader; I don't read short story collections in order. I just pick one whenever I feel like it (usually in the middle of a busy morning before I go to work) to shake things up. But the tone that he uses in most of his stories here has some soothing effect on me, and it is this vein that the collection carried, notwithstanding the order in which I read his stories.

"I imagine my search will continue -- somewhere. A search for something that could very well be shaped like a door. Or maybe something closer to an umbrella, or a doughnut. Or an elephant. A search that, I hope, will take me where I'm likely to find it (p. 290)," he writes. And here lies a promise. I'm just waiting to read about whatever Mr. Murakami is searching for.

Margarettown (Gabrielle Zevin)

After learning the hard way, I told myself that I wouldn't be taken in by a cover or a blurb without being certain of the story's merits. The last real disappointment of this sort came via Tiffanie Debartolo's God-Shaped Hole. (Okay, that may sound a bit harsh, but what I really mean was that I had higher hopes for a story that contained a personal ad saying, "I'm seeking a friend for the end of the world" than what the novel actually delivered. Are contemporary love stories really doomed to be the literary world’s favorite spot for clichés?) Since then, one practice I've employed on purchasing books cold is to check if there was an approving review from the New Yorker or some other credible body (like my best friend).

Yesterday, though, I couldn't resist Gabrielle Zevin's Margarettown. No recommendation from my best friend, no glowing New Yorker review at the back. Actually, there wasn't a review there at all. The blurb almost felt like one of those chain e-mails that clogs my inbox, part of which reads: It is the story of what it takes to love the same person for a lifetime – and about the impossibility of really knowing anything about who it is we have come to love. You know the type. So why did I end up buying it? Because I'm a pushover for love stories, and it was the fact that this was unabashedly, unapologetically a love story that gave it its appeal.

Ms. Zevin's language is precise and appropriate, and she effectively uses this to explore what I think is a lovely premise for a boy-meets-girl story. Her protagonist is nameless, familiar, as we watch him fall in love with the equally familiar Margaret Towne, a woman who contains a world of other women inside her (and no, I don’t mean in the schizophrenic or even alien-ish sense). Ms. Zevin addresses a lot of relationship issues in her novel. Margaret and her incarnations are engaging, and in a way, so is our narrator, who candidly claims, "Much as I hate to admit it, I was, at times, the villain in this story. At other times, I was the love interest (p. 32)."

Sadly, the story drags past our protagonist and his Margaret. While some of these chapters are actually insightful, I find that they diminish the story's impact. Thankfully, though, they’re mostly short chapters, and I wasn't compelled to linger on these pages.

But just when I thought I was getting too much of those dragging chapters, Ms. Zevin hits me with one that reduces me into a sobbing mess (I'm hormonal this time of the month). I reread that particular chapter a few hours later and still I had to lie facedown in bed (in true dramatic fashion). It was on my third read that I finally got through it without shedding a single tear, and I realized that while her words were simple, perhaps even maudlin to some, they knew what they were saying.

True, at times I felt that Ms. Zevin belabored the point. I get it already. She sums it up quite well when she says, "Real love is not just instinct, but intent (p. 240)," but that doesn't stop her from coming up with many other permutations of this thought. Love is a choice. Love is an act of faith. Love is willing yourself to love. The sentiment is significantly moving in itself, but when repeated countless of times, it loses its color. Despite this, I have to give Ms. Zevin points for not losing her earnestness and spirit -- and most of all, her insight. It is in this regard that I think Margarettown succeeds. It is a no-commitment read, yes, but one that burrows itself into your memories, making it a tribute to all the people you've ever loved, even if you’ve only ever really loved one.

Zhai helleva.

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart. - Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

For my best friend, who is leaving for Finland in about seven hours. Wind to thy wings.

The Harsh Cry of the Heron (Lian Hearn)

Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down looked like it would be the first target of my little online project, until I came face-to-face (literally, the character on the book cover fixed its unblinking stare at me from its temporary home on the shelf) with Lian Hearn’s The Harsh Cry of the Heron, the fourth book in her Tales of the Otori series. Later, I found that Lian Hearn is a pseudonym for two-time Children’s Book Council Book of the Year awardee Gillian Rubinstein (not that the name rang any bells in my admittedly limited mind). The Tales of the Otori have been my only encounter with Ms. Hearn to date.

I was a big fan of the series' first book, Across the Nightingale Floor. While I wouldn’t call her prose particularly inventive, I still think that she has found an ideal narrative voice for her tale. Her lyricism and attention to detail makes the most out of her chosen setting, drawing her reader into her fictional world. The Three Countries are Ms. Hearn's take on feudal Japan, retaining much of the elegance and mysticism for which Japan is known. It is against this backdrop that Nightingale unfolds Takeo's story with intimate familiarity despite its epic echoes; I felt as if I were hearing it straight from a scribe privy to Takeo's life.

Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed with the next two books. I felt that the story itself struggled to sustain its earlier drama, and despite the twists that Takeo's life took on, it no longer captivated me as much as Nightingale. In Heron, however, Ms. Hearn regains the tension that made Nightingale so appealing to me.

Heron pushes the Three Countries towards the brink of war, and Takeo's family towards their own demons. Here, Takeo and Kaede are no longer the sole movers of the story, as they are joined by their children: the heir Shigeko and the mysterious twins Miki and Maya. In a way, I feel that Hearn's real writing strength shows when she is seeing things from a teenager's point of view; Shigeko hooked me the way I was hooked on Takeo the first time I met him.

Heron's Takeo and Kaede, on the other hand, have grown thin and brittle. One is trapped by his secrets while the other is consumed by her anger. But events that are larger than the couple are at play here, and I must admit that I am a fan of the political machinations going on around them. I found that the battle towards the end, however brief, was effectively moving.

While the actual resolution of the Tales' events feels like some tragic afterthought (not to mention that certain elements that were introduced in this installment were not fully utilized and concluded), I felt it gave a more definitive end to the series than Brilliance of the Moon. (Ignorant that I was, I thought that Tales was supposed to be just a trilogy and bewailed the way the third book ended.) True, Brilliance had more pages of action and external struggle, but Heron gave me the edge-of-my-seat uncertainty that I had been looking for.

Word.

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. – Albert Einstein