First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria by Eve Brown-Waite

Once upon a time, and you may remember this if you've been with me a while, before BBAW, I used to, you know, actually review a book from time to time. First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria has been patiently waiting on my desk for an opportune time that just hasn't come. Its very presence there has been causing me a good deal of guilt and strife. So much guilt, in fact, that I found myself thinking the other morning in the shower about reviewing it, and then I began writing, in the confines of my barely awake mind, what I considered to be an excellent review. Now, I consider myself to be a great multi-tasker, but writing reviews in the shower simply poses some logistical difficulties that are rather impossible to overcome, which is why I'm sitting here now with barely an inkling left in my memory of what it was that I was going to say in my fantastic "barely awake mind review" which means we'll have to settle for this mediocre barely awake blog review.


Eve's joining of the Peace Corps was a long time coming. When the "I'll-be-joining-the-Peace-Corps" line begins to get a little thin, she knows it's time to finally go through with it. She's got one problem, though. She seems to be falling for her clean cut, "epitome of a good guy" Peace Corps recruiter, John. As her departure date nears, she wants less and less to follow through with her pledge to spend two years in a developing nation and more and more to stay with her one true love. Unfortunately, scrapping the Peace Corps probably means scrapping her relationship with John anyway, so it's off to Ecuador for Eve. Once there, she finds the experience to be even less rewarding than she expected as she has more than a little difficulty convincing people to actually put her to work. Finally, she finds a niche taking homeless boys back to their families, but soon after an unexpected tragedy reveals a secret from her past that has her returning to states and her future husband.

The meat of this book, though, is when John takes a job with CARE in Uganda. Here Eve's committment is put to the test as she is forced to take a chance on another developing country and adjust to life in a rural Ugandan outpost noted for its excess of guerilla activity. Here Eve will learn that compared to everyone else she is rich, gigantic bugs are a daily reality, and malaria is much easier to come by than a telephone.

Brown-Waite has an easy, conversational writing style that invites us into a very troubled African nation without simply focusing on the trouble. Brown-Waite truly brings the people of Uganda to life for her readers. Her stories are often laugh out loud funny and point out the quirks and celebrate the culture of a nation, that though struggling, seems to be filled with an unexpectedly optimistic, joyful people. Unlike many memoirs of Africa, Brown-Waite's manages to reveal the many issues facing Uganda without marinating us in a dark, dismal reflection on the "unsolveable" problems of a nation afflicted with extreme poverty and disease.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is a captivating and heartfelt love story of how Eve Brown-Waite fell first for a man and then for a nation. Brown-Waite's journey from inept bush housewife looking for a purpose to a thriving expat with a passion for this rather backward Ugandan community was a pleasure to read. Here's hoping that she is already busy writing about her adventures in Uzbekistan and beyond, as I would gladly go along for the ride!

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

I'm starting to feel really guilty because I read Lisa See's Shanghai Girls and somehow never managed to review it. After a few weeks, I figured enough other folks had reviewed it that my review would just be redundant and unnecessary especially since I was well on my way to forgetting most of the finer details. Then, I thought, hey, not only am I punking out on Random House which so nicely sent me this ARC when I was truly dying to have it, but I'm also screwing myself by not writing a review of a book that would count for not one but two challenges. With that plus the fact that I quite enjoyed the book in mind, I will now attempt to call forth my scant memories to compose a nice half-baked review.


Shanghai Girls is the tale of two sisters, Pearl and May Chin, who work as beautiful girls in pre-war Shanghai. As beautiful girls, they pose for various paintings that become advertisements and calendars, and because of their career, they enjoy a good deal of prestige and freedom. Soon, though, their glory days come to an end as war begins to sweep through their beloved Shanghai at the same time as their father is forced to sell the girls as brides to the sons of a man to whom he owes a large gambling debt. Despite their wishes to remain independent, forces beyond their control demand that they flee Shanghai and embark on the dangerous trip to America to join their husbands who are virtual strangers to them. On arrival they will find both less and more than they could have expected and learn to live with their own secrets and heartbreaks in the process.

Despite owning several of See's much praised other novels, Shanghai Girls is the first of her works that I've actually read. I was not disappointed. See's Shanghai leaps off the page both in its glamour and modernity and its poverty and squalor. She captures its melting pot diversity that results from the many contries dividing the city amongst themsevles as well as the unfortunate underside of its rapid growth. At See's whim we can be either awed or disgusted by the city depending on what the situation demands.

Pearl and May are the most captivating of characters. Their sisterly relationship is excellently rendered in that sometimes they seem to actively dislike each other, but when the chips are down, they are utterly loving and loyal to each other. As they face the reality of life with their strict new in-laws and husbands who they've known for all of one day, it is their evident love for each other that strengthens them and keeps them afloat as they face the many challenges that rise up to meet them in Los Angeles.

See's writing is easy to read and has such an admirable flow that Shanghai Girls proves to be hard to put down. My only minor quibble would be with the ending. It was so abrupt and unexpected that I actually turned the last page totally ignorant that it was the last page. I was sure the story had plenty enough steam to go another few chapters at least and felt a bit left hanging by the unexpected ending. Other than that, however, I was really quite thrilled with Shanghai Girls and look forward to reading more of See's work.

Read other reviews at...

A Guy's Moleskine Notebook
S. Krishna's Books
Books and Cooks

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

I so desperately wish that I had taken the time to write the review of Gin Phillips' The Well and the Mine the moment I finished it. My first impulse upon finishing it was simply to thank Phillips for writing such a fine book, which is odd, because that sort of thing is never something that is at the forefront of my mind. It's a brilliant debut and the sort of book that makes reading other more mediocre books oh-so-difficult, and I wish that I'd reviewed it when it was fresher in my mind. Nonetheless, I'm going to give the review my best shot and hope that it conveys just how much I fell in love with this book despite the fact that many have probably already done it and done it better.


Set in a 1930s Alabama coal town, The Well and the Mine is the story of the Moore family. They are neither very well off nor especially destitute relative to their neighbors. Supported by the father, Albert's, work in the coal mines, the Moores have enough to get by and are content with what they have. Albert has an enviable certainty about what is right and wrong that anchors the whole family as well as a before-his-time conviction that there shouldn't be anything wrong with having his black co-worker over to dinner in an era when such an action couldn't have been more scandalous.

To Papa, good was something you could hold in your hand. Hard and solid like coal rock. You could weigh it, measure it, see its beginning and end.... There was something comforting to that, knowing what he wanted, what he expected, and knowing what would disappoint him. But it meant lots of times there was no point in talking to him, because he knew his own mind so well that he didn't need to know yours.

When Albert met his wife, Leta, he was enchanted first by her hair, but then also by an uncanny foreknowledge that she would be the perfect wife and mother. Leta cares for her family with hard work, love, and self-sacrifice so elusive that her husband and children are hard-pressed to notice that she passed up that biscuit so one of them could have seconds. Albert and Leta have three children: Virgie, who is coming into her teenage years grounded, practical, and so pretty that she's nearly inapproachable, not that that keeps the boys from trying; precocious, imaginative Tess; and the youngest, Jack. They are a better than average family living an average life until the summer night when an unknown woman drops a baby into their well. Soon all five members of the Moore family are taking a second look at the world beyond their front door, looking beneath the mostly tranquil surface of their community, and questioning all their assumptions about their neighbors and the world in which they live.

I wondered how I really saw her that first night and how much was me shaping that memory, patting it down until it was tidy. For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered - imagined? - that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose.

Phillips is a great writer in the vein of Andrea Levy (Small Island) and Ann Patchett (Bel Canto) whose plots may not race along with an insane fervor but whose characters leap off the page, each with their own unique voice, and whose writing is so crisp and vivid that readers can't help but savor every word and the scenes those words bring to life. Each member of the Moore family narrates this pivotal time in their lives so distinctly that readers will hardly need indicators of which character is narrating. Each finds him or herself mulling over the big issues in the wake of the incident with the baby, contemplating wealth and poverty, whiteness and blackness, and even how much one can truly know and understand another person and their reasons for doing what they do. All of this is done with such vulnerability and subtlety that it never seems preachy but makes readers consider some of the same big questions that come with being human and interacting with people who are each going through their struggles that we might not understand but might hope to sympathize with nonetheless.

There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan.

The Well and the Mine is a beautiful To Kill a Mockingbird-esque book about salt of the earth decent sorts of people whose love for each other and respect for their neighbors is tangible, if unspoken, dealing with hard times and learning a lot about themselves and their neighbors in the process. A real gem of a book paved with so many perfect moments that I can do no justice, so you'll just have to read it yourself. And I hope you do.

Papa wouldn't complain to the brick company. He said what's done is done. (His eyes were red, which the mines brung about sometimes, but instead of making them look uglier, it made the blue seem brighter.) He squatted down next to me and told me Jack had been hurt real bad, and for a while all I could think was that his eyes were like sky and roses.


Oh, and Gin Phillips, if you happen to read this....thanks. =)

Read other reviews at...

The Magic Lasso
Books and Cooks
Semicolon
Thoughts of Joy
Five Borough Book Review
Many a Quaint and Curious Volume

This Was Supposed To Be a Book Review...

...and maybe it will be once I get to the end of the post. Wait for it...wait for it...

You know, I'm beginning to find my blog ironic. You see, I feel like I'm posting less and less. I review fewer and fewer books and yet more people are following me and subscribing to my feed on Google Reader than ever before - not vastly more, but more nonetheless. I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to work, unless, you people, like me, enjoy the merits of an infrequently updated blog. Some days, I tell you, I do. For one, then my Google Reader doesn't explode with like 50 zillion posts I don't have time to read...like it kind of is exploding now. But then the book blogosphere would be a mighty boring, lame place if everybody blogged like me. What I mean to say is, of course, hello new people and old people, it's a pleasure to have you here reading and commenting and generally being awesome despite my distinct lack of awesomeness.

Today I am contemplating the difficulty, yet again, of reviewing a book that I feel kind of ambivalent about. I pretty much need to review every book I read here because I read like a turtle (and turtles can't even read!) and therefore don't get many books read and therefore don't have many to review. Ah, but it's so hard to be really enthusiastic about reviewing those books that don't naturally create a great feeling of enthusiasm, which is not to say that they're bad, just that they're not super awesometastic enough to jolt me from my general book reviewing laziness.

Also, it's helpful when reviewing books to, um, actually have understood them. This brings me to an informal discussion (but if you're running a challenge that I'm taking part in, we're calling it a book review!) of a book that I barely remember! (This is the part where I attempt to create enthusiasm on both your and my parts with the use of exclamation points!!! Is it working?!?!?)

Anyhow, The Glister by John Burnside. I read it in March, somewhat hungrily devouring its mildly overblown prose thinking that once I reached the end I would understand what it was all about. Like pretty much everyone else whose reviews I have read, I didn't really get it. I thought for a time that maybe I was getting it, but I was fooling myself. I then came upon a sort of problem because I find it hard to frame a review for a book that I didn't understand. Upon reaching the end and trying to formulate some sort of review in my mind, I realized that without at least a basic understanding of what exactly the book was getting at, I don't really have a way to organize or give any sort of theme to my review (imagine that!). Then I realized how important it is to me to have my reviews be cohesive and revolve around some sort of main point, and I don't even know if people or if I even realize I do that. So, this book that would count for two challenges has languished (and languished and languished) on the to be reviewed pile because I'm just...stumped. Ah, but wait, I think I may have something after all...

The Glister is more the story of a town than it is of any one person. Innertown has been decimated by its chemical plant. With the demise of the once successful chemical plant, the town seems to deteriorate and fall in on itself. The plant leaves behind a town populated with ineffectual adults unable to recover from chemical induced ailments or trapped with the grief of losing loved ones and a generation of disaffected children who haunt the abandoned and disintegrating chemical plant property in search of meaning or maybe just a way out of their dismal futures. While the adults seem to be caught up in their own lowgrade misfortune, young boys are disappearing. Instead of seeing this for the problem that it is, all choose to believe that the young teenage boys have simply found a way to escape their fates in Innertown.

I can't tell you much more, except that there's quite a bit of violence, a few teenagers that are actually even h-rnier than you would expect of teenagers, and a good deal of bad language. And this wouldn't have bothered me if it had all added up to something in the end. Instead the book just seems to trail off in yet one more mystery that doesn't seem to make any sense. As it so happens, so much of this book would be promising if only it had all come to something.

If there is indeed a main character for this book, it is Leonard, a teenage boy whose father is dying and whose mother has walked out on them. Leonard's narration crackles and pops with teenage cynicism and wit. He's a good character with a unique and consistent voice. And the atmosphere. The atmosphere in the book is stunning. Burnside manages to create an impression in the reader that Innertown is a place where the sun never shines, where the town's misfortunes cover it like blanket. Even though there are scenes where the sun is actually shining, one can't shake the feeling that this is a place where it is perpetually overcast, and no light shines in. All these things kept me reading in hopes of a fascinating resolution despite my intense dislike of Leonard's freakishly h-rny girlfriend and the various and sundry gratuitous things you would find in an R-rated movie. As you may have guessed, I was ultimately disappointed. The end just doesn't quite come together satisfactorily. It's a little like being led into a maze by someone who knows where they're going and being left halfway through to find your own way out. While I can handle an ambiguous ending, The Glister ultimately leaves too many questions unanswered without so much as a clue to lead its readers to any real resolution.


Hey, wait - I think it is a book review after all! Yay! That was hard. I have to wander off and look at shiny things now. K, bye.

Okay, wait. I've got an ARC of this book that I'd love to unload on the unsuspecting public in hopes that, perhaps, said member of the unsuspecting public could read it and explain it to me. Well, you don't really have to do that if you don't want to, but I'm still giving away the copy. So if you want to have a try at it (now that I've gone to all this trouble convincing you to read it....hardee har har), leave me a comment with your e-mail address. International is okay. I'll draw the name next Saturday, May 16th, so uh, enter before then.

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton

I've been excited to talk about this book since I finished it, so excited in fact, that I've actually been talking to people about it instead of writing a review. So, I'm going to cut the yammering and try and get straight to the book review today, especially since we've seen so few of such things here lately!


In July 1984, Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a black man in her own apartment. With courage and words, she survived and was able to use her memories of the night to bring her rapist to trial. In January 1985, her supposed rapist, Ronald Cotton, was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. Eleven long years later he was set free based on DNA evidence that proved that he was innocent of the crime. Now Ronald and Jennifer are what no one would expect - friends.

Picking Cotton is first a brilliant indictment of the flaws in our justice system, flaws based on the inability of humans to ever be completely impartial, completely unprejudiced, and completely able to rely on their memories to perform dependably. It shows that despite our best efforts and intentions, the justice system can and does fail, and when it does, innocent people can surprisingly easily be put in prison for crimes they haven't committed. At the same time, though, Picking Cotton is about a victim, a victim each and every one us can sympathize with. A victim who just desperately wants to see her rapist go to jail so that she can stop existing in a constant terror and start living her life again. A victim who will do anything she can to make that happen, even if it means relying on a faulty memory.

Above all, however, Picking Cotton is a transcendent story of forgiveness. Just as we hear from the victim and easily sympathize with her feelings, we also get the story from the man that she picked, the man that she helped to send to jail for her rape, the wrong man. In his own words, we follow Ronald Cotton through his eleven years of wrongful imprisonment, eleven years in which he managed to stay alive, to stay out of trouble despite being imprisoned with the man who he's certain actually committed the crime that has robbed him of his life, and to never give up hope that the truth would come to light and he would be exonerated. And yet, even after being robbed of eleven years of his life, when Jennifer requests a meeting with him, her heartfelt apology is met with his heartfelt forgiveness making Picking Cotton the story of the the unlikeliest pair of friends that can be imagined.

In her blurb on the front cover, Janet Reno comments on the "human face" this book puts on the many issues facing the justice system, and I couldn't agree more. There are innumerable scholarly books on just such issues, but this book highlights those and does so much more by taking us inside a real story of two people both horribly wronged by the justice system. The writing really flows, the story is raw with the power to completely engage both readers' minds and emotions, and I heartily recommend it to...well...everyone.

Thanks to Anna at Authors on the Web for providing me with a review copy.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

Wow, it's been a slow week in blogland for me, which is bad because it seems that everybody else is really back in the bloggy swing of things. Blogland is in full swing and so's the workload at my job where it seems like we were busier than ever this week. Every day I try to sit down and read what everybody's writing and rarely get very far before getting distracted by all of life's have tos (and a few of those pesky other want tos, too). It all reminds me of why I've always been (and continue to be despite my best efforts) a big old lurker. All this commenting stuff makes this bloghopping take so much longer. Yet it would be a bizarre contradiction if I stopped taking the time to comment in the name of getting through the posts in my Google reader quicker, no?

Is anybody starting to get the feeling that the brief personal interludes at the beginning of most of my posts with actual content are merely serving to get me into the flow of writing? Because I'm pretty sure that's why I do this. Or else I'm just dragging my feet without really knowing why. Anywho, I'm all warmed up now, so on to the good stuff...

I finished a great book last weekend and my first read that will be released this year. It was one of those books that was fully satisfying and one that I knew that I would be recommending before I even came close to turning the last page. Any book that can make me forget that A) it's snowing outside and B) I'm sitting on a rock hard kitchen chair that's really making my back hurt for a considerable amount of time definitely gets my vote. Now the irony in all this is that, uh, I don't even remember requesting this ARC. Terrible, right? It arrived in the mail, and I was like...I chose this? I guess it sounds good, but when did I choose this? Oh well, all's well that ends well, and this book certainly does!


The book in question, of course, is Erica Bauermeister's debut novel The School of Essential Ingredients. Lillian recognizes from an early age that food is powerful. For Lillian, flavors can heal, spices can seduce, and even an ordinary apple can be magical for someone who eats it at just the right moment. During a monthly cooking class at her restaurant, Lillian sets out to show that cooking is much more than simply following directions in a recipe and eating is much more than a practical action to stave off hunger. As her students come from their seperate walks of life, each of their personal stories is illuminated and each of their lives is impacted by lessons they learn under Lillian's perceptive tutelage, lessons that extend far beyond how to bake a good cake or prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Slowly but surely, Lillian's students come to discover the power of a good meal to bring people together, to heal past hurts, and to alter the course of current struggles.

She saw that cookies that were soft and warm satisfied a different human need than those that were crisp and cooled. The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years. She discovered that people seemed to react to spices much as they did to other people, relaxing instinctively into some, shivering into a kind of emotional rigor mortis when encountering others.

The School of Essential Ingredients is a briliant blend of the obvious and the subtle just like the flavors that change the lives of Bauermeister's characters. Bauermeister's writing is a rare and sensual treat as her writing brings scents, flavors, and textures to life right alongside the poignantly rendered moments in the lives of each of the characters. Each of the students is fleshed out and all are having experiences that it is easy for the reader to relate to their own life. Their stories are both sweet and sad, but above all, genuine. Bauermeister's debut is a delicious story about food, about love, and about life that left me totally satisfied, even as I wiped a tear or two from my eye.

The frosting was a thick buttercream, rich as a satin dress laid against the firm, fragile texture of the cake. With each bite, the cake melted first, then the frosting, one after another, like lovers tumbling into bed.



That's two for two on books making me cry in 2009 which is actually a highly unusual event. And I should have written this review right after I finished the book instead of now when the afterglow has worn off in the face of a week of hard work - then maybe it would not be so feeble - though it is admirably concise, for me. *sigh* I loved this book a lot more than it seems like from the review, mmkay?

The School of Essential Ingredients will be available where books are sold on January 22, 2009. And have I mentioned that it was really, really good?

Read other reviews at:

Worducopia
A Reader's Respite
Books and Cooks

The 2009 Pub Challenge

This is the 2009 continuation of the one challenge I successfully completed last year, so I'll be trying to go two for two. The challenge is simply to read 9 books published for the first time in 2009, 5 of which must be fiction, none of which may be YA.

My choices will most likely be taken from this list...

1. The Glister by John Burnside
2. The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
3. Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton
4. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips
5. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
6. First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria by Eve Brown-Waite