Review: Raised By Wolves by Christie Mellor

 Harper likes this book so much they titled it twice. With this being the time of year that well meaning adults buy comedic life skills books for their departing progeny (or the progeny of others) I checked out this new to me book. Please don't buy it for anyone you like. This is the self help guide to adulthood you buy for someone you dislike, possibly even for someone you loathe.

However you title it, Mellor's Wolves  is written in that sort of ha-ha lightly abusive passive aggressive tone that people use to tell you you're fat. She takes the position that you are probably an overindulged child that others find tedious. With the will to change that reading her book has demonstrated, she can teach you to half ass your way to a responsible adulthood. Along the way she has proven tips, theoretical tips, and tips she heard other people talk about. It's like all the clippings your drunk grandmother ever sent anyone in the 1970's when she was tweaking her way through a Reader's Digest backlog.

I find these books interesting because I did leave my far from indulgent childhood home lacking most basic life skills. Cleaning, cooking, job holding, socializing, all of those were skills rapidly learned to function in the larger world. Post, Martin, Bombeck, I read them all. I found that there are two kinds of books. The first is useful, it clearly teaches you some basic knowledge. The second makes a buck for it's author and lets the giver feel superior. Under either title Raised By Wolves is far more the latter than the former. Fittingly, it's pricing is all over the map. Want the US trade paperback with the retro glam's feel? $5.60. Want it on Kindle? $10.99. Hardcover on clearance with the 1960's edutainment cocktail hour graphics? $7.98. Because Publisher Price Fixing* is all about helping you, the consumer, have choices. Buy and ship their dead stock or pay for the right to avoid storing pulp.

*I will now refer to Agency Pricing by the more accurate Publisher Price Fixing term. I never should have bowed to peer pressure and adopted the A word. what can I say, I'm weak like that.

Review: Composed by Rosanne Cash

It's interesting - in trying to write a love letter to her father  with Good Stuff Jennifer Grant ended up making the reader think less of them both. Rosanne Cash takes a different path. In Composed Cash is at pains to be honest, about herself, about her father, about her conflicted feelings.  Her fearless style reminds me of a lyric by Simple Kid.

"Buddy, it's as simple as that / When you see past all of the crap." 


Rosanne Cash absolutely sees past the crap. While completely unfamiliar with her musical work, I left the book interested in exploring it. She's a likeable narrator, a woman you'd want to spend a day hanging out with. Her memoir is not a linear or exhaustive work. She focuses on brief periods of her life and her feelings about them before turning the light to a completely different time. She does not exploit a life made for exploitation, reserving what she should and illuminating what she wants. I respect her all the more for protecting her children from a blow by blow account of her relationships. I respect her for confessing her frustrations as a parent and as a child. What emerges from Composed is a portrait of a woman finding herself while multiple lives pull at her. The life she's set her feet on suits her, the city she's chosen to live in is a good one for maintaing perspective. Her parents emerge as people sometimes overwhelmed by their circumstances yet leaving their children a legacy of love. Not an easy achievement, and one that requires the child to meet them more than halfway.

For me the most resonant passage is during a trip to Ireland. Rosanne happens to meet a living link to her father in the form of a shopkeeper. I have had those moments, I have had a letter from a woman who played in the street a hundred years ago with my lost family member. She had pictures too. It's an amazing and inexplicable experience to find yourself somewhere you didn't really plan to be only to find your family waiting for you. Truly a memoir rather than an autobiography, Composed is out in paperback next month and it's worth spending some time with.

Review: Seven Secrets of Seduction by Anne Mallory

Anne Mallory is one of those authors that seems to sit just under the conversation. Mention her name, and you're sure to find some fans, but ask readers to throw out names of romance authors they love and it's unlikely anyone in the conversation will mention her. (I used to discuss this phenomenon with another author. She had a long and respected career in a number of time periods and tones, she wrote for various publishers, and yet she never had the tip of the tongue status of authors with a fifth of the career. It's interesting and inexplicable what makes a author stay in everyone's mind.)

Being a huge fan of Anne Mallory's, and with her upcoming book being the second in this loosely connected series, I thought I'd remind everyone of Seven Secrets of Seduction. Miranda and the Viscount. The shopgirl and the aristocrat. There are some standard cliches of this sort of pairing and Mallory deftly avoids them through careful characterization. Miranda is not poor, she is what we might think of as middle class. She spends her break gossiping with her friends, she spends her evenings on her own pursuits or at parties, she is a fairly normal girl recovering from a serious loss. Society annoys her more than it impresses her. (Reading this I wondered if Anne Mallory ever worked high end retail. She certainly nails elements of a career in service.)

So, Miranda is not terribly interested in someone coming to save her from penury. This brings us to the Viscount, or Max. I really hate to say a thing about him. The way Mallory unfold his character over the course of the book is lovely, the reader learns about him alongside Miranda. I hate that I've even told you he's a Viscount. While the focus is on Miranda, how she crosses his path, how she comes to first desire and then adore him, the star of the book is the Viscount. The player who plays himself, the lost and lonely boy who wants to have it all ways. Although sharing few elements, Seven Secrets of Seduction reminded me of Edith Layton's The Fire Flower in it's emotional maturity. At one point Miranda tells Max that is is because she loves him that she must hurt him. There is a fundamental flaw in their relationship that will eventually poison it. Better to hurt now than hurt forever. Who hasn't faced that moment in their life? When love really isn't enough, when the grand gesture wouldn't change anything, when it's not your fault or my fault, it just is? It's a lovely book. If you didn't pick it up last year, it's worth reconsidering.

Review: Sons of the Revolution by Shana Galen

Shana Galen is one of those authors that I tend to forget about. When I look at her publication list, I realize I've read all of her books.  Although I can't recall a single detail, it's an overall positive impression. That's the case with the Sons of the Revolution series as well. On your left, a young orphan working as a governess is forced into life as a spy, where she discovers she is destined to be a Duchess. On your right, a young orphan is forced into life as a governess where... ok, that's not exactly fair. But that's the thing about a Shana Galen book. It's easy to fault them on the details.

The strongest section of both books is the prologue. When Julien and Armand are escaping the siege of their home the events are immediate, cinematic and relatable. Those sections of the book are up there with Joanna Bourne's work. In both cases, she has set up an excellent canvas. The eldest and his young mother escape the mob, leaving her husband and younger sons behind to face certain death. Awesome! (Ok, maybe not awesome, exactly... but c'mon! One kid wakes up to flickering lights on the ceiling. It's like riding Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney, but with actual terror!) Afterward, established in London and rich again, Julien's mom seems kind of sad. All the time. Those are the emotional stakes of the subsequent action. Sure, Julien keeps slipping in and out of France looking for his brothers. But the emotional repercussions of their experiences are not deep and traumatic. This is not angsty romance. Armand, who spent a decade in a solitary confinement, goes from mute and feral to resentful sibling fairly quickly.  At one point Armand challenges Julien "You treat me like I am an idiot!" Dude. You've been refusing to speak, wear shoes, or handle utensils. You wanted he should give you a medal, maybe? Julien responds that Armand has no idea what it cost Julien to keep searching for him. I guess Armand thought Julien found his way to France and infiltrated a prison on a lark, because Armand is all hmm, good point.

Of course, as easy as strolling in and out of the prison is, perhaps Armand can be forgiven his error. By the time it's his turn, he heads off to his former cell (guess he forgot his toothbrush) with less thought than I use to walk up to the corner for milk. (Here's another easy swipe - a spy in England knows where Armand is being held, but everyone in the prison has no idea who he is and all the people looking for him on the outside have no idea where he is, and the criminal element in France has no idea where he is... how does the spy guy figure it out? If Armand is mute, who told his jailers the name Armand?)  I could easily break these books down by missed opportunities, but it would miss the point. I enjoyed them. Do I think Shana Galen could really write something astonishing? I don't know. She has some great characters, she has some great situations, but the execution of them is enjoyably rote. The genre equivalent of the popcorn movie. You can see everything coming long before it hits, the clues to future events are clubs with kleig lights attached. It's the getting there that's the fun. You can settle down, have a read, and enjoy it. You don't need the collectors dvd afterward, it's just Tuesday night and something to do.

I will probably read everything Shana Galen ever writes. I expect to forget who she is at least three more times in my life, but I will still have that good impression. She's a fun evening, but not the girl I want to marry.