Tag: generational

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#BookReview: An Echo In Time by Boo Walker

Strong Multi-Generational Tale. With this tale, Walker expands into something I’ve never seen from him (though I *am* a somewhat recent fan, only finding him within the 2020s or so) – a dual timeline, present day/ historical fiction tale. Both periods are executed well for their time and setting, though there are some mystical elements to the present day setting that will be harder for some to accept – and some elements of the more practical present day setup that may seem just as unrealistic to others.

Still, Walker manages to write a female lead as well as most female authors within the women’s fiction space while *also* having a male lead that is also Walker’s typical greatness with such characters. That he *also* manages to give both of them a compelling romance – and proving some of my points re: “romance novels” along the way! – is even more icing on the cake there.

But really, the story here is about the trauma and the seeming generational nature of it. In this respect, I didn’t really see the present day issues as “trauma” so much as a lot of bad luck/ bad circumstances. Yes, any one of the things *suck*, but I didn’t really see them as “trauma”. (Though the one situation, part of the practical yet possibly unrealistic stuff noted above, … well, I’ll shut up now to avoid any possible spoilers.) This noted, the historical period was simply *full* of trauma, that part I absolutely got and it was 100% crystal clear – particularly as they relate to some other books I’ve read and raved about over the decades.

And yet, regardless of which part of which storyline’s traumas hit you, the reader of this review, harder… Walker, as always, shows superb skill in bringing the characters *back from it* – which isn’t really a spoiler, given this is very much Walker’s style in every book I’ve read from him. Indeed, it is a particular strength of his that sets his tales apart from many in whichever genre you may place his books. Thus, no matter your own traumas in your “real” life and no matter how much you may identify with a particular trauma found in this tale… you’re also going to find a degree of catharsis within these pages that is Walker’s particular brand of real-world “magic” with his words.

Very much recommended.

This review of An Echo In Time by Boo Walker was originally written on August 27, 2024.

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#BookReview: Find Me In California by Kerry Lonsdale

Cathartic Trippiness. Imagine a Stanley Kubric type acid trip – and now imagine it in full virtual reality 8K. That is what reading one particular pivotal scene of this book is like, and it is in this sequence in particular that Lonsdale pulls out storytelling elements that even after having read literally every book she’s written to date, I didn’t know she had. Which is one of the reasons I love checking in every year for her annual release and seeing what she has come up with now – she is a master of evolving and expanding her skillset while still remaining true to the emotional depth and complexities of characters that she has crafted in every book, no matter the particulars or particular mechanics of the book at hand.

This is one of those books where the current fad of “magical realism” is done particularly well, even competing with one of my favorite scifi based such scenes in any medium ever, where in the movie Frequency (2000), the ending sequence features things happening in two timelines at once at a pivotal moment and the past being shown to directly impact the present in a key way. What Lonsdale manages to do is almost the opposite yet also quite the the same in a sense, and eventually we get to where we can almost *see* the character at hand’s neurons re-wiring as all that has happened becomes known.

And then there is the catharsis on so many levels. As noted above, Lonsdale excels in creating particularly complex characters, and this tale is no exception. That she manages to create *so many* characters that are each equally complex shows true skill – I’ve read quite a few books even just when counting as starting around the same time I read my first book from Lonsdale, and rare indeed does a book have quite this level of depth and “flavor”.

Overall truly an intriguing book that will likely be remembered for many years by at least some.

Very much recommended.

This review of Find Me In California by Kerry Lonsdale was originally written on July 11, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel

Grief And Madness. One of the things I like about this particular book, and the way it parallels my own family’s life, is in showing how events during WWII can have generational impacts via creating madness – the older term for insanity, yet which feels like it applies more appropriately here – in some of the survivors of that war. Here, we see it even in two people who were far from soldiers, far from the front lines. They were simply mothers who had daughters at nearly the same time in the same city who happened to become friends… and then had that friendship tested in pretty horrific ways. But the varying types of madness we see here do a great job in showing how the war impacted different people differently, even people as connected as these two mothers were. Without giving too much away, we even see the horrors of the Holocaust a bit – and there again, we see survivors trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

All told this was one of those books where the gut punches land heavy – but early. The “big reveal” is, in fact, rather obvious *much* earlier than the explicit reveal, and yet the way this is done works within the story being told of the varying madnesses and how these survivors are trying to cope in any way they can. So while I can’t personally fault Harmel for this, I can see where other more stringent reviewers might. Even the near 400 page length works well here, never feeling bloated or too slow and instead simply packing in a *ton* of rich detail and events, many – even among the seemingly more insignificant in this tale – based on real world events and seemingly quite accurate. (The author’s note in the end reveals how one particular incident within the last few pages of the book is actually the author inserting her characters into that particular moment, but otherwise being pretty close to an actual nonfiction report on the incident in question.)

Overall a truly well done, beautifully layered tale of two beautifully broken women and the impacts their choices have across decades. Very much recommended.

This review of The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel was originally written on December 19, 2022.

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#BookReview: It All Comes Down To This by Therese Anne Fowler

Nothing Technically Wrong, Yet SLOW. This is one of those books where there is nothing technically blatantly *wrong* about the storytelling… and yet the reader is left with the sense that this story could have been so much more engaging had it been told differently. To the level that while this book is around the 350 page mark, it almost reads as though it is a dense academic tome of twice its length – even though it very clearly is *not*. As other reviewers have noted, there are a LOT of characters to keep up with early, but that does in fact get easier probably by even the 25 – 33% mark, once we’ve visited each a couple of times and get a sense of where their individual arcs are. In the end, this is a solid slice of life family drama that touches on very real and very messy issues, but could have been better told in this format with several dozen fewer pages (to speed the pacing) or with this number of pages in a different format. Still, as noted, there is nothing technically wrong here and other readers may have a better time with this book. Recommended.

This review of It All Comes Down To This by Therese Anne Fowler was originally written on June 20, 2022.