LITTLE by Edward Carey

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

Personal copy

Recommend ed by WORD BY WORD

About

An amazing achievement...A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself." --Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked
The wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud. 

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and . . . at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

THE FARM by Joanne Ramos

5.5

Random House
Publishing date May 19, 2019

About

Would you trade nine months of freedom for a better life?

Nestled in the Hudson Valley is a sumptuous retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages--and all of it for free. In fact, you get paid big money--more than you've ever dreamed of--to spend a few seasons in this luxurious locale. The catch? For nine months, you belong to the Farm. You cannot leave the grounds; your every move is monitored. Your former life will seem a world away as you dedicate yourself to the all-consuming task of producing the perfect baby for your überwealthy clients.

Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines and a struggling single mother, is thrilled to make it through the highly competitive Host selection process at the Farm. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own young daughter's well-being, Jane grows desperate to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery--or worse.

Heartbreaking, suspenseful, provocative, The Farm pushes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit to the extremes, and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.

My View

The Farm is a futuristic novel taking us into a world easily imagined. It is also the story of immigrants leaving their homeland hoping a better future lays ahead for themselves and their loved ones left behind.

We meet Ate a Philipina working as a nanny for New York's elite, Jane her niece soon joins the ranks of nannies recommended by Ate, earning bonuses and travels to exotic places allows Jane some financial comfort, Ate however has even grander ideas for her niece.

Golden Oaks, a place were young women can increase their financial needs in luxury, a spa of sorts.
Ate arranges an interview for Jane with Miss Yu, the organiser of Golden Oaks. Jane readily signs a contract putting her trust in Ate.

Does Jane and the other young women at Golden Oaks fully understand what lies beyond carrying a rich woman's embryo? Will the the financial gain be worth the nine month stay at Golden Oaks? The silence each girl must keep, the monitored surveillance?

What could go wrong? Is Golden Oaks so far in the future....

I enjoyed this novel immensely, highly recommend

Thank you to Random House for this early arc
Thank you to NetGalley

IF, THEN by Kate Hope Day

4.5
Random House Publishing House
Publishing date March 12, 2019

About
In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. Ginny, a devoted surgeon whose work often takes precedence over her family, has a baffling vision of a beautiful coworker in Ginny’s own bed, and begins to doubt the solidity of her marriage. Ginny’s husband, Mark, a wildlife scientist, sees a vision that suggests impending devastation and grows increasingly paranoid, threatening the safety of his wife and son. Samara, a young woman desperately mourning the recent death of her mother and questioning why her father seems to be coping with such ease, witnesses an apparition of her mother healthy and vibrant and wonders about the secrets her parents may have kept from her. Cass, a brilliant scholar struggling with the demands of new motherhood, catches a glimpse of herself pregnant again, just as she’s on the brink of returning to the project that could define her career.

At first the visions are relatively benign, but they grow increasingly disturbing—and, in some cases, frightening. When a natural disaster threatens Clearing, it becomes obvious that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same.

My view

We have all heard of Parallel Universes, imagined how our alternate selves might live. 
Author Kate Hope Day takes us to a neighborhood close to Broken Mountain, an inactive volcano, were inhabitants of a small neighborhood will meet their alternate selves as they proceed with their individual lives.
The premise of multiverse is an interesting one, my only small regret, I wish the author delved deeper into this aspect of the novel, expending the protagonists meetings with 
their other worldly selves, engage them somehow deeper into the story line. Otherwise I really enjoyed this novel, the characters are well developed, the story line is cohesive. It is an interesting, enjoyable read.

I recommend it to anyone who loves an interesting, well written novel.

Thank you to Random House Publishing
for this enjoyable arc

Thank you NetGalley for the arc

GOLDEN CHILD by Claire Adam

5.5
Crown Publishing
Publishing date January 29, 2019

About

Rural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father, works long, exhausting shifts at the petroleum plant in southern Trinidad; Joy, his wife, looks after the home. Their two sons, thirteen years old, wake early every morning to travel to the capital, Port of Spain, for school. They are twins but nothing alike: Paul has always been considered odd, while Peter is widely believed to be a genius, destined for greatness.

When Paul goes walking in the bush one afternoon and doesn't come home, Clyde is forced to go looking for him, this child who has caused him endless trouble already, and who he has never really understood. And as the hours turn to days, and Clyde begins to understand Paul’s fate, his world shatters—leaving him faced with a decision no parent should ever have to make.

Like the Trinidadian landscape itself, GOLDEN CHILD is both beautiful and unsettling; a resoundingly human story of aspiration, betrayal, and love.

My view

I just now finished GOLDEN Child by Claire Adam. Noticing 1 star ratings, I hesitated and put the book aside to read closer towards the publishing date.
Having a friend born in Trinidad changed my mind glad it did. 

The story of Paul and Peter, twins begins at their birth, Peter arrives in this world a healthy boy followed by Paul who's birth is overshadowed by a more difficult birth which will follow him throughout his life. 
Both boys are loved, by their mother and father, including a large extended family comprised of Aunts, Uncles differing in social status which will play a deciding role in Paul's and Peter's lives.
Although the story takes us deep into the underbelly of Trinidad, it is a tale easily imagined in places were crime infringes upon the innocent, a feeling I had throughout the novel.
Claire Adam's pen brings Paul and Peter right off the page into ones heart, crying while reading a novel doesn't happen often, I cared for these boys deeply.
Reality drives this story, its strength lies in the truth the author brings to the page, perhaps not quite comfortable for everyone...whence the 1 star ratings. For me this novel rates a solid 5 stars.


A must read

Thank you to Crown Publishing for giving me a chance to read this beautiful novel before being published.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc

A LADDER TO THE SKY by John Boyne

5.5
Crown Publishing
Hogarth
Publishing date November 13, 2018

Description

A seductive, unputdownable psycho drama following one brilliant, ruthless man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of success
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent – but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. 
 
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiate's himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel. 

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall…
 
Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.

My  thought

A ladder to the sky is an extraordinary read. The writing flows, the prose is beautiful, the characters are well developed. 

Elegant comes to my mind, an elegant delivery of words.

The ruthless driven protagonist Maurice, is a joy to behold, watching him play his victims without scruples, helpless in his greedy youthful fingers. No doubts hinder his way to become the next literary genius. In a chapter which takes Maurice to La Rondinaia. an exchange between Gore Vidal and Maurice is pure genius in the hands of John Boyne author of A ladder To the Sky.

This is my first novel by this author and definitely not my last.

An absolute must read

Thank you to Crown Publishing for  allowing me the opportunity of an early read.

Thank you NetGalley for this advance copy