C Gockel Writes

Book Review: The Widow’s of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

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Book Review: The Widow's of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

The Widow’s of Malabar Hill is a mystery … not my usual genre. In fact, I think it may be the first time I have read a mystery since I gave up on a Nancy Drew book my aunt lent me when I was a pre-teen.

The prose wasn’t as lyrical as the fantasy and sci-fi I enjoy, but that might be a function of it being a mystery? I don’t know. Have I mentioned I have never read a mystery?

The setting is what drew me in: 1920s Bombay under the British occupation. The politics of the time and place was striking. In between the Great Wars, with the British, Hindus, Muslims, Parsi, (and more!) all intermingling, it was as dramatic a melting pot–or stew pot–as anything in the U.S.. Perhaps more so, because there is long history of antagonisms between all the groups. The protagonist is a Parsi woman, and I loved seeing her perspective, and that it wasn’t told from the point of view of a British protagonist. (I love you Brits, but it is nice to see India through Indian eyes.) Caste differences, gender roles, religious clashes are all here.

The heroine is both believably flawed and likable, the author’s portrayal of her relationship with the British is complicated and understandable.

I liked it enough to get the next two from my public library, and I hope there are more in the series!


Get the first book at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Ca, Amazon DE

 Kobo, Google Play

Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

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Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, GooglePlay, Kobo, & B & N

This is my current “listening,” and it is awesome. I’m just going to share the blurb, and say, yes, it is all that it is cracked up to be. Love the working class author’s point of view.

“Chickie takes us thousands of miles on a hilarious quest laced with sorrow, but never dull. You will laugh and cry, but you will not be sorry that you read this rollicking story.” (Malachy McCourt)

Soon to be a major motion picture written and directed by Peter Farrelly, who won two Academy Awards for Green Book – a wildly entertaining, feel-good memoir of an Irish American New Yorker and former US marine who embarked on a courageous, harebrained scheme to deliver beer to his pals serving Vietnam in the late 1960s.

One night in 1967, 26-year-old John Donohue – known as Chick – was out with friends, drinking in a New York City bar. The friends gathered there had lost loved ones in Vietnam. Now, they watched as anti-war protesters turned on the troops themselves. One neighborhood patriot came up with an inspired – some would call it insane – idea. Someone should sneak into Vietnam, track down their buddies there, give them messages of support from back home, and share a few laughs over a can of beer. It would be the Greatest Beer Run Ever. But who’d be crazy enough to do it? One man was up for the challenge – a US Marine Corps veteran turned merchant mariner who wasn’t about to desert his buddies on the front lines when they needed him. Chick volunteered. A day later, he was on a cargo ship headed to Vietnam, armed with Irish luck and a backpack full of alcohol. 

Landing in Qui Nho’n, Chick set off on an adventure that would change his life forever – an odyssey that took him through a series of hilarious escapades and harrowing close calls, including the Tet Offensive. But none of that mattered if he could bring some cheer to his pals and show them how much the folks back home appreciated them.This is the story of that epic beer run, told in Chick’s own words and those of the men he visited in Vietnam.

This book is as great as it sounds. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Grass by Sheri S. Tepper

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Grass (Arbai Book 1) Kindle Edition by Sheri S. Tepper (Author)

Grass by Sheri S. Tepper is the best book I have read in a long, long time. It’s sci-fi with heart, and it does what I always crave in my sci-fi and fantasy, it uses fantastical worlds to ask big questions while ringing emotionally true.

The setup to the story is pretty simple: a plague is sweeping through the galaxy, and only the backwards, provincial, planet of Grass is unaffected. A family is sent to infiltrate Grass’s insular ruling nobility to find out if Grass’s immunity to the plague is real, or only legend, but nothing on Grass is as it seems, and though Grass may be safe from the plague, it hides dangerous secrets.

I don’t want to give too much away, tension hums in the story from the very beginning, and unraveling the mystery is part of the books appeal. I did almost stop reading after the first few pages, I wasn’t sure I was going to like any of the main characters–the women were simpering, the men were cruel, both genders were caricatures of human beings and oppressive gender roles. I like exploring such things (you may have noticed) but there always has to be balance, and certainly in all times and places there have been men who respected their wives and who weren’t simpering but were still loved. However, the book shifted away from nobles’ problems to ordinary people and it became clear that the author had more to say. Also, religious people were portrayed with depth.

There’s drama, action, and cool aliens. The prose is amazing, and makes me feel dumb. (Sigh. Maybe some day.)

I’ll probably be rereading this book. The eBooks is available on Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

On Amazon US it is also available as both used and new paperbacks. This is a classic of sci-fi, and it is probably available at your local public library!

Book Review a Stitch in Time

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A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong

99¢ as of October 30, 2021 click for current price on: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia and Barnes & Noble.

Audio and ebooks also available at: Apple, Kobo, GooglePlay

A Stitch in Time is a love story between two adults from two different times. It is heartfelt and moves at a can’t-put-the-book-down pace. Kelley is famous for her thrillers and it comes out here. There are some very heart in the throat sequences. All the action is really smart–these are adults, and there aren’t any plot contrivances because a character made a decision that was out-of-characterly dumb. The characters are also realistically drawn. The heroine is a university professor from Canada, and she is believably woke. The characters in the rural Scottish village where the titular “stitch” in time is located are not. However, they’re not bigots either. They’re just not up to date on the latest lingo, which doesn’t mean they aren’t accepting.

There was a lot of interplay between cultures–past and present, rural and urban. At one point the heroine points out that the Victorians could crush someone’s reputation with just the insinuation of a sexual scandal, but of course, at least in the U.S., reputations have been damaged and or destroyed by false accusations. For good and for bad, people are just people, but love and friendship are as enduring as the bad … and that was what really made the book.

You can get Stitch in Time in ebook, audiobook, and paperback at Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia and Barnes & Noble.

Audio and ebooks also available at: Apple, Kobo, GooglePlay

Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

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The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel (P.S.) Kindle Edition by Helene Wecker (Author)

$2.99 in the US and £3.99 as of December 20, 2021 8AM CST
Click for current price Amazon US, United Kingdom

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay available at Scribd as an eBook and Audiobook

Also for sale on Amazon Canada, Australia and as an Audiobook

The Golem and the Jinni is a chance meeting between mythical beings that takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker’s debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.

It is a beautiful love letter to New York at the turn of the century, and of the people of three faiths whose lives were intermingling there–and the monsters of their faiths set loose on the streets.

It’s a beautiful story of redemption, for monsters and men. I don’t think that I can write as lyrically as Helene Wicker, but I consider this a model of folklore transformed for the modern world, and it has certainly influenced my work. If you love history, theology, and fairy tales, you will love this book.

Book Review: A Tale of Two Cities

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A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

It was the best of times to read A Tale of Two Cities. It was also the worst of times. Reading a novel set during the French Revolution was a little bit too close for comfort during a week when the Capital of the U.S. was invaded. I did lay up unable to sleep one night. The way Revolutionaries used the Guillotine to settle old scores was harrowing, as was the presumed guilt of the accused.

On the other hand, the book was comforting. There have been worse times than these. Also, we do have mechanisms for self-correction that the French did not have. I hope we realign.

On a stylistic level I found reading this book a lot more difficult than I expected. I read a couple of of Dicken’s novels when I was younger: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and a Christmas Story. It was a lot harder to fall into the older English than I remembered. Perhaps younger minds are simply more flexible?

Also, I found the book to be a bit over the top in the melodrama department. I found myself scratching my head and wondering if people always spoke in a way that was so … flowery.

I loved the grave robber. (Family legend is that doing a little bit o’ that is what got some of my early ancestors kicked to this continent, so I may be biased.) Dickens treated the character with great sympathy, pointing out that the doctors who used the bodies were lauded, while the grave robbers themselves were despised. There was a lot of social commentary in the book, and despite the melodrama, a lot of good insights into human character and into revolutions.

A Tale of Two Cities was free when I picked it up for my Kindle.

Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay also available at ManyBooks.net in exchange for your email address.