Review: The Cottage at Glass Beach

Title: The Cottage at Glass Beach

Author: Heather Barbieri

Series: N/A

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: May 15,2012

Format: ARC

Pages: 302

Dates Read: March 13-16 2016

Source: Won via Goodreads First Reads

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My Rating: 3 Stars

Snippet That Stuck With Me:

Synopsis:

Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts state history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and a doting mother. But her carefully constructed life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her daughters—Annie, seven; and Ella, twelve—and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides.

Nora spent her first five years on the island but has not been back to the remote community for decades—not since that long ago summer when her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her aunt's friend Polly suggests, a selkie—a mythical being of island legend—summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone who, like Nora, is trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own—a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past. 

Melissa's Musings:

This book has an easy, rolling quality to it, like the waves coming in with the tide.

It's easy to get pulled in to the world, and to lose yourself in the story as Nora steals away with her daughters, Ella and Annie, to Burke's island to try and protect them from the scandal of her husband, the youngest attorney general in their state.

The island and the inhabitants were probably my favorite part of the book as a whole. There are a lot of interesting characters here, and the fact that there is a lot of Irish history tied to the island gave the supporting characters easygoing, likeable qualities. The island itself is described beautifully, and is easy to picture as you read.

The story moves back and forth, telling bits of the present day, intermixed with pieces of Nora's past. I liked the sequencing, but I honestly wish there had been more buildup of Nora's past. I felt that there was too much kept behind closed doors, so that at the end, you were left dangling, trying to believe too much of what happens in the last chapter is Noras story coming full circle through her daughters, when you don't get enough of a sense of her story in the first place. 

There are elements of magic to the story, but I don't feel that they resolve themselves, so you're left trying to fill in the blanks yourself.

I am curious to know what happens to these characters, but this story isn't really the kind that lends itself to a sequel, unfortunately.

Have you read this? Any other beach reads that you would recommend?

Review: The Ghosts of Nagasaki

Title: The Ghosts of Nagasaki

Author: Daniel Clausen

Publisher: Self Published

Published: December 8, 2012

Format: Paperback

Pages: 248

Dates Read: April 1-15

Source: Received from the author

in exchange for an honest review

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My Rating: 3 Stars

Snippet That Stuck With Me: "For a moment they are solitary stars, tied together by an invisible shoelace. "(pg. 108)

Synopsis:

One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago. 

Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. 

Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.

Melissa's Musings:

The first word I would use to describe this book would be confusing. It delves into the story right away, with very little background info. Which is good for setting a fast pace, but not so great for someone like me who enjoys the buildup of a backstory. At times I found myself not wanting to pick it back up again. But, once I did I was able to be pulled in enough to keep reading.

This is a stream of consciousness novel of sorts. Or maybe a novel with multiple streams of consciousness?

The book shifts perspective a lot, between the protagonists present day life as a business man in Tokyo, and his memories of his life four years ago when he first came to Japan to teach English. The story is also mixed in with what could be perceived by some as delusions or hallucinations. The story jumps can be unsettling, but they're also part of what draws you in in the first place.

I never really related to the main character on a personal level. There's not much told about him as a person, except that he is an orphan, who went through the foster care system and had it kind of rough. You actually don't even ever learn his name. I only knew it from an insert that the author sent along with the book. 

My thought is that by not telling us his name and by telling the story from the first person perspective, the author might have been trying to make the story, as well as the pain the protagonist is running from more universal.

The story itself is somewhat dark, there's a lot of pain, and unresolved grief and a loss of his sense of self, on the part of the protagonist. It's likely why he attacts all of these ghosts, and other figments of his imagination, like Mr. Sparkles, a glittery dinosaur.

Mr. Sparkles actually made me laugh out loud. I thought of him as an alternate funnier, version of Mikey Welsh, the protagonists' roomate.

Along with ghosts and glittery dinosaurs, there are other added elements of magical realism in the book. The magical realism element is further solidified  with the introduction of an island where one can go to procure and grow a brand new heart,fed by memories. This magical island seems to be some sort of limbo for the protagonist, between the current version of himself and the version of himself from 4 years ago.

There's a strange religious side to the story as well. One of the characters that Pierce attracts is a man who follows him around claiming that he's an apostate. In one scene the protagonist conjures up more of his ghosts who take this character and put him onto a cross in the middle of the ocean, and Pierce feels it his duty to rescue this man, against impossible odds. Then there's a secretive backstory that Pierce's first foster family were evangelicals, who were somehow horrible to him, and that the family who eventually adopt him are also particularly religious as well. I found the religious undertone confusing and at times disturbing.

The main message that I gathered from the story is that it's about a person who was trying to escape the pain of never having a place to really call home, and trying to recover from the death of the one person in life who seemed to truly understand him.

This story, while confusing, was told in an unusual and unique way.

Review: The Man With the Green Suitcase

Title: The Man With the Green Suitcase

Author: Dee Doanes

Publisher: Wld Enterprises

Published: July 30, 2012

Format: Kindle

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 328 pages

Source: Received from the author

in exchange for an honest review

Read: December 31, 2012-January 2, 2013 

In  A Few Words: Unusual 

My Rating: 2 Stars

Goodreads: Add This To Your TBR Shelf

Goodreads Synopsis: What does... 

A prostitute, 

A corrupt businessman,and 

A disfigured young woman 

Have in common with a mysterious, old homeless man who carries a green suitcase? 

The old man comes into people’s lives because it is important for them to experience the visions that he is somehow able to show them—visions that even he doesn’t understand. But whoever he connects with will go through a transformation that will change the course of their life, for better or worse. The old man has no memory of who he is or even what the suitcase holds. But one day he will find out all about his own secret and dark past… 

This story is magical realism, realistic with paranormal elements, a mystery that needs to be solved, and a man and woman who will finally realize that they were meant to come into each other’s lives and remain forever

Melissa's Musings:

The overall concept of this book is really interesting. There's a homeless man who wanders the streets, stopping by a local shelter to get food and a shower, once a week. While there he's connected with several different people, some good, some bad, and he shares visions with them. This man doesn't remember who he is or his past and is pretty much a loner, all he knows is that he must pass on the visions to the people they are intended for.

 The interesting thing about this is the way the visions come about. When he is with someone and needs to pass along one of these visions, the energy builds up inside him, and the wrinkles on his face start to change. The energy buildup shines through the man as light. 

Of course this special ability makes people want to be around him even more, but he tends to shut people out and do his own thing. There are lots of other characters, but I don't want to talk much about them because I'll give away major plot points if I do. The main focus is on the man with the green suitcase and it's his visions that tie all of the characters in the book together. All of his visions do come true, in one form or another.

As interesting as this part of the plot is, I feel that the writing could have been a lot more polished to help pull the reader into the story more. The writing is somewhat stilted in places. It also feels like the descriptions are somewhat cluttered. I find it odd to be saying that there are too many details given, but that's what this felt like. It just feels like the author is trying too hard to set up the scene for the reader, and that leads the cluttered descriptions and halts the flow. Instead of flowing naturally, these overly descriptive passages feel clunky.

There are a few other weak spots in the structure that pull you away from the reading as well. The book switches tenses often, even in the middle of paragraphs. There are also a lot of instances of repetitive phrasing throughout the story, sometimes one right after the other. There's a section where the story alternates between Valerie and Gerald and they mirror phrases almost exactly, one right after the other. Sometimes this can work, but it didn't quite work here. The alternations with headings, in the middle of chapters was also unsettling. I think that if the story had simply been told from their perspective for the whole chapter it would have been better than alternating between them in the same chapter. 

Also, in a lot of sections there are sequences that I think are meant to be told as flashbacks which are all italicized. A few of these interspersed throughout the story would have been okay, but there are several and they are quite distracting.

One element of the book that I really enjoyed was the aspect of volunteerism. The author did a good job of really making it so that you can understand how life as a homeless person can be. It was nice to see characters who really enjoyed volunteering and helping others. There is also a character with mental illness in the story and while there was some description of that, it would have been nice to see that issue touched on a bit more thoroughly, in order to be able to better relate to Valerie's character.

The ending itself made no sense to me. The book was so focused on the man with the green suitcase and his power, that the buildup to his back story and his whole reason for being the way he was felt rushed, and it wasn't revealed until the very end, so I didn't have as strong feelings for him as I might have had I learned more about him sooner. The ending fell flat for me, due to lack of character development. 

The story is described as magical realism, and I feel that it was too focused on the magical part to really connect to it.