In The Woods

In The Woods by Tana French is a psychological thriller published in 2007. It is the first in the Dublin Murder Squad series. French's writing is different from what I usually read and it took me a while to become accustomed to her style, but I loved this novel.

Three children,  Germaine (Jaime) Rowan, Adam Robert Ryan, and Peter Savage go missing on the afternoon of August 14, 1984 in the woods of Knocknaree (outside of Dublin). When the police are called, they are only able to find one of the children--with his shirt torn, shoes bloody, and no recollection of what happened to him or to his friends in the woods. Twenty year"s later, Detective Rob Ryan (the boy who was rescued) and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve year old girl in the same woods. This investigation is Ryan's best chance of solving the mystery of his own past.

The wood of Knocknaree is a character in its own right, living, breathing, and driving much of the novel. "The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion. Its silence is a pointillist conspiracy of a million tine noises--rustles, flurries, nameless truncated shrieks; its emptiness teems with secret life, scurrying just beyond the corner of your eye....These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the microlandscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing an t they could find their way out without putting a food wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams....These children will not be coming of age, this or any other summer. This August will not ask them to find hidden reserves of strength and courage as they confront the complexity of the adult world and come away sadder and wiser and bonded for life. This summer has other requirements for them" (French 2).

French writes a complex and multi-layered tale. At the end, what happened in the woods is clearer, but the truth remains elusive. Our narrator, Detective Ryan, cautions readers of this. "What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception" (French 3).

Little Women

I love the movie Little Women featuring Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Christian Bale. I recently tried to watch the latest adaptation on PBS. It was terrible. I decided to actually read the novel. I enjoyed it and discovered new parts to the story of the four March sisters. My favorite sister is Amy or Jo. I like Meg in the movie version, but not as much in the novel. And truth be told there is nothing wrong with Beth.

cover illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

So often people prefer the print or screen version of a story. For me, I usually prefer the version I encounter first. I prefer to read Agatha Christie and the only Poirot I will watch is David Suchet. I prefer to watch Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, but I might give the novels another chance. Little Women has its merits in both print and screen forms.

Because of Miss Bridgerton

Book #112 Because of Ms Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

The Bridgertons are back! I love the Bridgerton series of romance novels by Julia Quinn and finished this latest in one day. The Bridgerton series revolves around Violet and Edmund Bridgerton's 8 children: Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth and how they meet and fall in love with their respective spouses.

The Miss Bridgerton in question is Billie (Sybilla) Bridgerton; her brother Edmund is the patriarch of the Bridgerton clan in the original series. Julia Quinn decided to go backwards to the Georgian times and write about an earlier generation of Bridgertons. This is Book 1 of the Rokesby series.

Billie Bridgerton cannot stand  George Rokesby, although the Bridgertons and Rokesbys are good family friends and neighbors in Kent. In true Julia Quinn fashion, Billie and George are thrown together (a cat was involved) and slowly begin to realize that the other is not quite as horrible as once thought. As usual, there is tons of witty and hilarious banter, a rather cutthroat game of croquet (but what other kind is there?), the aforementioned cat, and much more.

The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck

The Dressmaker is a love story set in the fashion world of France and New York. Claude Reynaud is a tailor in the town of Senlis, forty minutes outside of Paris. Claude does everyday mending and sewing jobs for the townspeople of Senlis, but his skill has attracted Parisiennes. The Parisiennes come to be fitted by Claude, especially for wedding dresses. A new client, Valentine de Verlay, gives Claude complete control over the design of her wedding gown. Despite her engagement, Claude is attracted to Valentine and she to him. The quiet, calm, orderly life Claude is used to is thrown into disarray by Valentine.

The Silk Roads

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

Frankopan was fascinated with maps as a child and later as an adolescent.

He writes, Many stories set me on the path to looking at the world's past in a different way. But one stood out in particular. Greek mythology had it that Zeus, father of the gods, released two eagles, one at each end of the earth, and commanded them to fly towards each other. A sacred stone, the omphalos--the navel of the world--was placed where they met, to enable communication with the divine. ... I remember gazing at my map when I first heard this tale, wondering where the eagles would have met. i imagined them taking off from the shores of the western Atlantic and the Pacific coast of China and heading inland. The precise position changed, depending where i placed my finger to start measuring equal distances from east and west. But I always ended up somewhere between the Black Sea and the Himalayas" (xix).

Frankopan explains further that, European history divides Asia into three zones: the Near, Middle, and Far East. Often, the Middle East seems to be the locus of ancient and modern civilization. For Westerners, this idea seems strange when we are taught that the Mediterranean is the heart of civilization. However, looking at the word "Mediterranean" literally "the centre of the world", this fixation on locations in the heart of Asia makes sense.

Frankopan traces the history of the center of world from the ancient, 400 B.C., to the present day. The  Silk Road or Roads were created in 119 B.C. when China opened the Gansu corridor after decades of military campaigns: beyond the Pamir Mountains lay a new world. In the Han dynasty, Silk was an important commodity and eventually became international currency.

Although we might refer to the Silk Road, this transcontinental highway was many highways. Silk, grains, jewels, spices, tea, oil, even slaves, and other goods were bought and sold. Ideas, religions, cultures were exchanged and shared. Frankopan's book is a study of the world in transition and in transformation. The Twenty-First Century has seen the emergence of The New Silk Road in the various -stans of the former USSR, in Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, in western China, and elsewhere. The threads of the Silk Roads are being re-knotted, rewoven, and restored.

The Room on Rue Amelie

The Room on Rue Amelie by Kristin Harmel

"The smallest acts of courage are the ones that change the world."

In 1939, American and newlywed Ruby Henderson Benoit moves to Paris with her French husband Marcel. Her dreams of a romantic life in Paris are shattered as war breaks out and France falls to the Nazis. Her marriage collapses as well, but not before Ruby learns a secret about her husband Marcel.

Ruby's neighbors, the Dacher's are affected by the anti-Semitic laws passed in France. Charlotte is eleven when French Jews are forced to wear the yellow star and she can no longer attend school. When the government begins rounding up and deporting Jews, Charlotte's life changes forever.

RAF pilot Thomas Clarke joined the army to protect his country. After his only surviving family member is killed in the Blitz, he questions his efforts and his desire to defend his country. However, he continues to fly and his plane is shot down in France and he makes his way to Paris.

War brings Ruby, Charlotte, and Thomas together. The bonds they form in the room on the Rue Amelie keep them together, and renew their hope and sense of purpose.

The Rue Amelie sits between the Eiffel Tower and the Hotel des Invalides. I've circled it on the map. This map I have was published in Germany sometime before 1979 (The Gare d'Orsay still exists on the map).

Rue Amelie is circled.

 Paris

I really enjoyed this novel and cried at the end.

***Spoiler Alert***

Author Kristin Harmel was researching WWII connections to Florida for her novel When We Meet Again when she came across the story of Virginia d'Albert-Lake, an American who married a Frenchman and moved to Paris in 1937. Virginia became a member of the Resistance and worked on the Comet escape line before her capture in 1944. She was imprisoned at Ravensbruck. Ruby's story is inspired by Virginia. Harmel was inspired by Virginia's choice to remain in Paris during the war even though as an American, she had been given the option to return home.

Virginia's diary survived the war and was published in 2006 An American Heroine in the French Resistance. 

Murder Between the Lines

Murder Between the Lines is the second book in the Kitty Week's series by Radha Vatsal.

Murder Between the Lines takes place in 1915 amid the mounting tensions of World War One. Kitty (full name Capability) Weeks is a reporter for the New York Sentinel's Ladies' Page. For her latest assignment, she is sent to interview the headmistress of Westfielf Hall, an elite all-girls boarding school. Though not featured in her article, Kitty is drawn to student Elspeth Bright and her scientific research. On Christmas Day, Elspeth is found dead and Kitty believes she has been murdered. Kitty begins to dig into Elspeth's death and her research about batteries. Her investigations lead her to the Women's Suffrage Movement, President Wilson's policies, submarine warfare and the United States Navy, and again to Westfield Hall where all is not as it seems.


I enjoyed this story and liked the character of Kitty. I was not completely satisfied with the novel's ending and the resolution to Kitty's investigations.