The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty

Re-blogged from Best in Fantasy, originally published Aug. 16, 2015

Today we talk about The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty. This is not fantasy by any means, but it is an excellent read, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. Released in 2013 by Berkley, and Penguin in the US, this book is currently a #1 bestseller at Amazon, and Moriarty is listed in the top 100 authors there. 

First the Blurb:

At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died. . .

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

My review: This book is about loss and grief in Sydney, Australia--but it could easily have been set in Seattle or London and it would still feel true. These women are people you feel you know, and while they are not always likable, they are always true to who they are.

Several characters in the book have secrets they hold on to that they eventually reveal. The concepts of guilt and betrayal loom large in this tale, driving it to the shocking conclusion. Ethics and morality shift and bend under the stress, and three good women do things they consider heinous, and each finds ways to justify it.

The Berlin Wall is referred to throughout the novel as Cecelia’s daughter, Esther, works on her school project. And in fact, we learn that Cecilia met John-Paul on the day the Wall finally came down. The Wall is symbolic of many things in this tale, as Tess also has a connection to it.

Rachel is pinched and afraid to love anyone but her grandson. Her son is devastated by the loss of his sister and hurt by his mother’s distance. No matter how he tries, he can’t get close to her.

These are complicated women, faced with an unbearable situation. The actions and the final resolution is completely true to the characters. This is a slow-moving tale action-wise, but it literally tears through the emotional gamut. I give The Husband's Secret four and half stars.

Madame Zee, Pearl Luke

 

Madame Zee

Pearl Luke

HarperCollins/Harper Perennial

365 pages

Kindle Edition: USD $11.52

 

Madame Zee: A Clairvoyant Without Illusions

review by Mary W. Walters

Those of us who cannot foresee the future may be tempted to assume that psychic ability comes with some awareness of what one’s visions mean. This is not necessarily so, as we come to realize early in this fictionalized biography of clairvoyant Madame Zee. It was largely due to a series of misinterpreted visions that Zee, born Mabel Rowbotham in Lancashire, England in 1890, became a central (and generally disliked) figure in the Aquarian Foundation—a spiritualistic cult based on Vancouver Island off Canada’s west coast–and partner to its enigmatic and charismatic leader, Brother XII.

Mabel had the first intimations of her psychic abilities in childhood: she called them “daydreams.” The visions intensified following the tragic deaths of her cherished elder sister Honore when Mabel was only seven, and then of her young brother William a year later. Not only was Mabel bereaved and confused by these deaths, she also felt responsible, and grew into adulthood with a heavy burden of guilt. Honore came to take a central role in Mabel’s “daydreams,” maturing as she would have done if she had lived.

In this rendering of Zee’s life by Pearl Luke – a powerful fiction writer whose first novel, Burning Ground, won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel – Mabel’s approach to her psychic gifts from the beginning is to attempt to understand where they are coming from, as well as what they mean. Isolated by her clairvoyant episodes, throughout her life she also seeks to find others who are like her—with marginal success.

In London, where her family moves when she is 15, she visits the London Academy of Psychical Research, and investigates spiritualism, clairvoyance, reincarnation, and the-then-relatively-new Theosophy movement founded by Helena Blavatsky. When she is 20, she moves with her parents to prairie Canada, where she takes up a position as a teacher, but her beliefs and visions lead to her dismissal. A bad marriage comes to an end in Seattle, and she flees to Pensacola to seek the counsel of her ex father-in-law, Coulson, a Spiritualist.

In Florida, where she assumes the name Madame Zee to mark a new beginning, Mabel experiences companionship, love, more loss and increasing insight into who she is and what her powers will allow her to do–for herself and others. She develops her talent as a visual artist, creating drawings of her visions as well as realistic scenes, and meets her second husband – the attractive but deeply twisted Roger Painter.

Then Madame Zee has a powerful vision involving herself and Brother XII, and she and Roger travel to Vancouver Island to join his colony. (Anyone who has been to the Island will recognize the place: “Where has the moss ever grown so green? Thick luxurious towels of it wrap everything in sight. It covers the boulders at the top of the embankment and clings to mammoth fir trees surrounded by yet more mosses, pea-green foreground for a panorama that slopes steeply down to even more green, the tops of trees poking through wisps of fog parted like tossed veils over emerald waters”).

Now Zee is plunged into the world of Brother XII and the cult that grew around his charisma and apparent mystic capabilities in the late 1920s, when he established colonies in Cedar-By-The-Sea and on Valdes Island. She rises in power through the ranks of his disintegrating empire to a point that will both rescue her and drive her toward destruction. Luke’s storytelling powers are acute, allowing us to relate utterly to Madame Zee’s evolution: “Whenever she reflects [ . . . ] on becoming that which is herself, she understands clearly what [Brother XII’s writing] means for about a fifth of a second before the meaning curls away from her again, like a ribbon curling in a gust of air.”

 In the notes that follow the text of Madame Zee (interesting to all readers and particularly useful to reading/study groups), the author explains that one of her purposes in writing the novel was to try to figure out why the real Madame Zee became a figure who was so disliked in the Aquarian Foundation. Part of the reason was certainly the self-protective and aloof personality that developed in response to her past tragedies and abuses—not to mention the difficult situation in which she found herself once she reached the Island and began to really get to know Brother XII. 

But Madame Zee was also isolated from others by her gifts, and as a writer I found much in her to which I could relate. What might be seen by others as haughtiness, distance and abruptness was no doubt an effort to protect her essential self, and to hide the layers of disappointment when she thought she’d found someone to whom she would be able to relate, only to have her hopes dashed each time yet again.

Madame Zee, first published by HarperCollins in 2007 and now available as an ebook, covers huge swaths of territory geographically, and represents dozens of characters keenly and succinctly. But the book is also thematically vast – touching on issues that range from early 20^th century feminism, to religion, spirituality and the nature of psychic powers, to the meaning of life, to the quality of relationships among women and of those between women and men, to drug dependency, to the power of charismatics, the evolution of cults, and more.

Always, and above all else, Madame Zee is a beautifully written story that will draw you along from one satisfying scene to another. And unless you also have the gift of foresight, each new adventure in Zee’s life will come as a complete surprise.

 

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Todays guest reviewer, Mary W. Walters  is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. Most recently she published the stylish and witty novel, ‘The Whole Clove Diet’. She is a highly acclaimed editor of books, academic articles, grant proposals, papers, theses, essays and blogs. She is a writing coach, and teaches academics, non-profit organizations and artists how to write really effective grant applications. Mary also blogs about what she knows and what she thinks on her blog, The Militant Writer.

 

The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy

J. K. Rowling is an extremely strong writer, and is brilliant at crafting and peopling her tales. First off, you need to set aside aside Harry Potter and read this book as if it were the only work of hers you’ve ever read.  If you go into this expecting Hogwarts and all the gang reinvented, you will be disappointed. You'll love or hate this book on the strength of her work, not because it is part of a mega-phenomenom. This tale is about ordinary people, living rather mundane lives. Their politics are mundane, their motives are the usual trifling things which motivate petty people. These are not always nice people.  That said, I would recommend this book to those who read literary fiction. This is an adult book, for adult readers.

Councilman Barry Fairbane dies unexpectedly, and this leaves a vacancy on the town council, leaving the little town of Pagford in shock.

Pagford is, on the surface, a postcard English village, complete with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but beneath the surface, the citizens cope with poverty, drug abuse, child abuse, rape, and mental illness along with all the social illnesses which lie hidden under the mask of civility in most communities. Rowling explores this underbelly with sharp wit, cutting, sarcastic humor and sly social commentary.

The empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the focus of an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations. The characters are well drawn and in true Rowling style, you see them fully before you, warts and all.  They curse, they commit terrible crimes and they are violent toward each other in ways that are both heinous and reprehensible. The youth curse, commit crimes and everything else real youth regrettably do. There are raw, violent scenes  depicted in this tale, and each scene is believable and drew me in. 

The reason I can only give this book four out of five stars is there are some places where it is a bit slow; but I stuck with it through those few places and I’m glad I did.

Over all this is a good effort, and shows Rowling’s understanding of human nature. HOWEVER -  I was unimpressed with the price of the Kindle download, and feel that for most people it would be a better investment to wait and buy the book as a paperback when it comes out, because at $17.99 per download it is most definitely overpriced.

72 - hours to Crack the Universe’s Code; Mark O'Brien

72 - hours to Crack the Universe’s Code by indie author Mark O'Brien  is a novel of political intrigue, mathematics, passion and underlying it all, an imperative directive to humanity with dire galactic overtones.

Somewhat like the Illuminati, the Mathematika is a mysterious Greek society founded long before Christianity. The reason for its existence is to bring mankind ‘that which they know but cannot understand’ and was created to ‘safeguard the truths until mankind was ready to understand them’. Now the time has come, and the Mathematika is now ruled by the dark fanatic, Alexander Kepler – who believes ethical lines were drawn so you would know where to cross them. Yet, although he is extremely violent, murderous and obsessive, Kepler is a family man, and his relationship with his wife is one of the lighter parts of the tale. This most violent and evil of men is also a romantic, tender lover. However, the time has come for the world to know some basic truths about the Universe, and it is Kepler’s task to insure they are made public.

To this end, he kidnaps a renowned Muslim leader, Ibn Qurra. His henchmen also kidnap the renowned Rabbi Jacobi, and Father George Pappus, president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation -  all three at 10:45 am on the same day.

Not all of Kepler’s heavies are 100% behind him, one is a traitor, and another considers him to be insane. All the heavies are individuals, which makes reading them enjoyable.

Ransoms are sent: a series of 3 mathematical equations which all must be solved one per day within 72 hours. If one equation is wrong, all three of the kidnapped men will die.

The protégé of George Pappus, Clancy Sylvester, astrophysicist and mathematician, is determined to get his mentor back. The author has researched all three of the religions represented by the three kidnapped leaders, and also the cultures they represent.  The author also appears to have a firm grasp of mathematics, as I do NOT; but  on the positive side he did not make me have to do the thinking so the math was fine. Clancy’s friend Jules Hadamard (female, despite the name) who is a math genius explains it all. All of the characters are distinctly individual, and if some are over the top, well that is part of the fun.

While O'Brien goes a little heavy on the descriptions at times, over all this is a compelling read. There are moments of humor and also of pathos, and the action is non-stop. All in all, I found this to quite entertaining, and well written. This is a good read, and I do not hesitate to recommend it!

The Woman Upstairs, Mary W. Walters

First published in 1989, The Woman Upstairs written by Mary W.Walters is a timeless tale of a family's descent into dysfunction and estrangement. A young woman, Diana Guthrie, has been told that her estranged mother is dying. Neither her mother nor her brother has told her this, but a friend of the family has taken it upon himself to tell her, believing that it is the right thing to do. Diana makes the arduous drive from Edmonton, Alberta to well-heeled Donellon, Ontario, with no clear idea of why she is going to where she is not wanted, and not knowing what she will do when she gets there.


Diana's mother's family, the Leavenworths, had long been the pre-eminent family in Donellon society, and her mother and grandmother never let her forget that. Her haughty, disdainful grandmother despised Diana's father, whose parents were from the United States, sneering at him and his textile factory in Donellon as being low-class and generally treating him despicably.


Grandmother despised the Guthrie Textile Factory for its ugliness, its base origins and considered it to be a blight on the landscape. She was frank in her opinion that her daughter married far beneath herself.


Despite Grandmother's disdain of her husband, Diana's own mother insisted that Grandmother live with them, against her husband's earnest wishes. Grandmother is not simply hateful to Diana's father. She also open in her intense dislike of Diana, the child of six years of age who did not fit into the Leavenworth mold. From the moment her grandmother moves in with them, the Guthrie marriage begins to deteriorate, and Diana's childhood becomes an endless cycle of guilt and recrimination.


All through her school years, Diana is both admired and despised for her connection to the Guthrie Textiles, as her father is the largest employer in Donellon. Her own grandmother's vocal disdain was perhaps a part of that, giving the local aristocracy permission to feel somehow more upper-class than someone whose wealth is both new and foreign. She has few close friends and is awkward and unsure of herself as she traverses the high school years.


There are many open wounds in Diana's relationship with her mother, and the news that her mother is dying sends Diana into an emotional tailspin, which she desperately tries to keep contained under the smooth veneer that, if she only knew it, is the mark of the women in her family.


Her younger brother, Mitchell, still lives with their mother, and is possessed of an extremely warped view of the situation. He is angry and resentful of Diana, telling her frankly that she is not welcome there. He arrogantly orders her to stay away from their mother. Indeed, Diana does hesitate to go upstairs to her mother’s room, but that is for reasons of her own.


The story of what lies between Diana and her mother unfolds over the space of several days, during which she lurks downstairs, unwilling to go upstairs to her dying mother, and unable to leave. Other relationships which had been poisoned as a by-product of the Guthrie family situation come to light and are examined for the first time in years.


As a young child, her relationship with her mother was destroyed by her grandmother, whose hateful actions go unpunished, while Diana's punishments for natural childish behaviors are never-ending.


Guilt, abandonment and death form the watershed moments in Diana's childhood. Her father breaks under the extreme pressure of living with his mother-in-law, and abandons his family, which cuts the young Diana deeply.


The suicide of Noel, the boy she loved, drives her to leave Donellon under a cloud of hate and suspicion. Many people blame Diana for his death. The story of what really happened, and what lies between three generations of women in one family is compelling and impossible to put down.


The characters are clearly drawn and environment in which they live is rich and vivid.  I highly recommend this classic book, as either an e-book or as a paperback.


Other books by Mary W. Walters include several technical books and novels, including  The Whole Clove Diet, a novel that was just published in March of 2012, and is soon to be available as a Kindle download.

I guarantee that I will be buying that book!