Author: Hilary

This is a thrilling account of the sinking of the Lusitania – how it happened and the people it affected.

The author, Erik Larson, has already published four best-sellers in which he fuses history and entertainment to give a vivid account for what took place. In Dead Wake, the fastest liner in service set sail from New York bound for Liverpool on May 1, 1915, when World War I was entering its 10th month.

Larson explains that the passengers on board were not anxious about the war even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. The captain of the Lusitania was confident that the gentlemanly strictures of warfare, which forbade the attacking of civilian ships, would hold up as they had for a century. Germany wanted to change the rules and the captain of one of their U-boats was happy to oblige.

As the Lusitania and the U-boats made their way to the shores of Ireland, Larson introduces us to some of the passengers: a famous Boston bookseller, a woman architect, and President Woodrow Wilson among others. The liner was also carrying a record number of children and infants. When the sinking comes we are completely involved in the people aboard and the actual event is unforgettable. It gives Erik Larson another fine book.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

This is a charming book about bookstores across the United States that are favorites of some of the best-known American writers. There are 36 states in all represented, with delightful illustrations of each bookstore described here.

John Grisham, for example, lives in both Virginia and Massachusetts but chooses to write about “That Bookstore in Blytheville” which is in Blytheville, Arkansas. This is near the town where Grisham was born and when he came to introduce his own first books, the owner gave him a welcome which he has never forgotten.

Another best-selling author, Simon Winchester, lives in New York City and Massachusetts. He writes about “The Bookloft” in Great Barrington, Mass., which he loves for its highly knowledgeable staff and huge selection of books.

This book is about American bookstores but writer Richard Russo mentions Canada in the Introduction when he says: “independent booksellers always get the word out, and with their help great young writers you don’t know about yet will take their place on shelves next to their heroes, from Margaret Atwood to Emile Zola.”  In the Afterword, writer Emily St. John Mandel, who spent part of her childhood in Victoria, British Columbia, writes “when I was a child I was in love with Laughing Oyster Bookshop, the wonderful independent bookstore that’s still my favorite shop on all of Vancouver Island.” It would be nice if someone wrote about bookstores in Canada; then we could discover who declares “Books on Beechwood” their favourite.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

At the Water’s Edge is a novel contrasting the rich, privileged life of Philadelphia in l944 with the struggle for existence in a remote Scottish village where the war affected everyone’s lives.

The story focuses on Madeleine, a young woman from Philadelphia who recently married a draft dodger named Ellis. He had enraged his father, who cut him off financially. Along with their friend Hank, they decided to make the trip to Scotland and try to find the Loch Ness monster, which his father had failed to discover.

The three of them settled in an isolated inn in the Scottish Highlands, where the locals are short of food and fuel, and hold the visitors in contempt. Gradually Madeleine makes friends and helps with the work at the inn. She discovers quite different values in the people she gets to know and falls in love with the beauty of the country as well as the courage of its citizens.

It’s a well-written book by Sara Gruen, who has also written the best-selling Water for Elephants, Ape House, Riding Lessons and Flying Changes. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and three sons.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

For sheer escape, here is another delightful Hamish MacBeth mystery, set in the little town of Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands.

This tall, modest police sergeant is now well-known through some thirty stories by Beaton. MacBeth loves his posting, where he keeps a small number of farm animals, as well as a dog and cat who follow him everywhere. He has avoided promotion, in spite of a fine record of successful arrests. In this book, however, there is word that his own police station, along with many others, may be closed for economic reasons. When murders turn up this time, MacBeth is more keen to take the credit he deserves in solving them.

In an area where he is widely loved, MacBeth does have an enemy in Detective Chief Inspector Blair who resents MacBeth’s success in solving crimes and would like to have him moved. He gets a keen young officer to visit the town of Lochdubh and follow MacBeth. When this officer is suddenly found murdered, there are complications all round.

M.C. Beaton knows and loves Scotland and particularly this northern area. The characters are vividly drawn and the story completely absorbing. This author has written another series, the Agatha Raisin books. She has been called a master of outrageous black comedy.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

This is another ambitious and successful novel by the Irish writer, Colum McCann.

Called Transatlantic, it moves between two continents and across three centuries. We see the black American slave, Frederick Douglass, coming to Ireland in l845 to champion the ideas of democracy and freedom. Then in l9l9 two brave airmen pilot the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland. Finally, in l998, the American Senator George Mitchell crosses the ocean to help Northern Ireland’s difficult peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.

Running alongside and through these major stories are the lives of four women, whom we get to know and love. One reviewer writes that the uncanny thing about McCann is the way he finds the miraculous is inseparable from the everyday. Lives are made amid and despite violence. He threads together public events and private feelings.

McCann was born in Dublin, Ireland but is now living in New York and teaching writing at Hunter College. He has written six novels and two collections of short stories. He has won several major international awards and his work has been published in more than thirty-five languages.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall

Alexandra Fuller has written several books on her life in southern Africa. This one describes her marriage to an American and her home in the new world.

Fuller was born in England in l969, but moved with her family to a farm in what was then Rhodesia, when she was four years old. Her parents were a courageous but eccentric pair, firm supporters of the colonialism in their adopted country.  So were Alexandra and her sister.

This took a rude shock when Alexandra fell in love with an American guide and went with him to live in Wyoming. The book takes us back and forth between visits “home” (to Africa) and the struggle to maintain her new family and children in the U.S. Fuller is candid about the effect of her father’s spoiling and her own ability to run her life. She also misses the beauty and grandeur of Africa. She writes honestly about her struggle to maintain her marriage, and her sadness when she fails. It is altogether a colourful and brave book.

Reviewed by Anne McDougall