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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Chasing Fireflies – Charles Martin – Growing Up, Family and Place

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Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery is another novel by Charles Martin set in the south with engrossing characters, frequent shifts in time and character and characters who are deeply mistreated but maintain grace throughout.  In Chasing Fireflies we have three stories:  Chase, who desperately wants to know who he is and whose he is, Sketch, an abused boy who is mute but communicates via drawing, Unc, who was framed and looted by his high-rolling brother Jack.

Chase narrates and seamlessly brings us between his memories growing up as Unc’s foster child and his current-day work investigating Sketch and his relationship with Unc and Unc’s niece Tommye who is dying of Aids.  I admired how Martin flipped between times and character focus.

Martin has a gift for making his characters come to life.  Unc is the most developed but we get a solid taste of Sketch.  Chase develops himself partly through his narration – some of which is self-pitying – and partly by his actions and observations of Unc and others.  We also see side characters like Jack, Unc’s wife Lorna, Chase’s friend Mandy.  Tommye tells her own story but it was the weakest of the bunch.  Her motives were unclear.

Chasing Fireflies has a very complex plot with lots of side journeys, some of which seemed a bit too much.  I did not understand why Unc, portrayed as a Christian man with deep grace, would have tossed a body into the river.  That seemed out of character and unnecessary.  We also heard at the beginning and near the end that evil brother Jack was after the last thing Unc owned, the Sanctuary in the middle of the 26,000 acres of swamp and timberland that Jack already extorted from Unc, but we never heard the pretext for the seizure.

The plot is melodramatic but still manages to be excellent.  I read this very fast one evening, then thought I may have missed something that would have clarified Tommye or Jack, so re-read it.  I hadn’t missed anything but the second time through I noticed a few plot and character false notes that hadn’t struck me as off kilter the the first time.

Chase’s constant refrain about wanting his Dad (no mention of Mom) and the aching hole he had as a foundling got a little tiresome.  The point of the book is family and belonging, but at some point we all have to face what is, good or bad.  Even those of us who grew up in loving families have aches in our hearts, it is part of life.

We see that Chase and Mandy are falling in love but their romance is a side conversation.  Martin could have explored that a little more, perhaps having someone to love would help heal Chase’s broken heart.

Overall I loved the book and will continue to look for books by this author.

Review: First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen Follow On to Garden Spells

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This is a hard review to write.  I cannot do justice to this book.

Sarah Addison Allen came to prominence with her novel Garden Spells, about a family in a small southern town that is blessed with unusual gifts. Claire includes flowers from her garden in her catered meals, pansies to make children thoughtful, rose to remember one’s first love.  Claire’s sister Sydney left home immediately after high school and returns with a small child. Garden Spells ends with hope for both sisters.

First Frost takes place 10 years later.  Sydney owns a successful beauty salon, is happily married to Henry.  Daughter Bay is now a freshman in high school with the gift of knowing where everything is supposed to be.  Sometimes she knows where people are meant to be, and this gift is on overdrive the first day of high school when she sees Josh Matteson and knows immediately she belongs with him.

Claire began making candy infused with her garden flowers, at first for family, then neighbors with sick kids, then she got noticed by Southern Living and now cannot keep up with the candy demand.  She is married to Tyler and has a small daughter.

All the Waverly women and their families are facing the usual problems.

  • Bay’s should-be Josh is popular and a senior, and his father is the Matteson who broke Sydney’s heart.
  • Sydney’s receptionist Violet takes gross advantage of her kindness and doesn’t do  her job.  She also brings her darling baby Charlie to work where he stole Sydney’s heart.
  • Sydney wants another child, a boy for Henry.
  • Claire wants to quit the candy business and go back to catering, but worries about finances.

Enter a silver-haired older gentleman, Russell Zahler, a heartless ex-carnival performer and con man.  Russell is 80 nowbroke and looking for the easier scores, the fast in and out.  He knew Claire and Sydney’s mother years before and kept a photo of her with the children and another couple.

Russell tells Claire that she is really not a Waverly but the daughter of the couple in the photo and asks for a pay off to keep quiet.  Being a Waverly matters to Claire because she believes her skills and gifts are based on her family.

All Set Up for Resolution

Sarah Addison Allen’s genius is in how she builds out real people as she resolves these problems.  The characters do what they do best, act as they would every day and things just work out.

True, Sydney must help Josh and Bay but all she does is build a bridge, she doesn’t even put a sign up saying it is there.  Sydney’s relationship with Violet and Charlie works to its inevitable end, again based completely on Violet’s character and personality.

Claire works out what to do about candy vs. catering and handles Russell the same way she does everything.  She talks to Tyler and her cousin Evanelle and her sister and the decision suddenly is easy.

I am on Sarah Addison Allen’s email list for a reason.  I love her books.  They are hard to describe.  Southern?  Yes, but that’s trivial.  Romance?  A little, sure.  Suspense?  A tiny bit.  Normal contemporary fiction?  Yes it’s contemporary but there is no angst, no divorce, no miserable sins and lies.  Fantasy?  Nope.  Her books are all of these but so much more.  Truly excellent, well done characters you want to see be happy, interesting plots and a touch of magic.

Excellent! Faith, Love, Sacrifice With A Football Background – A Life Intercepted

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The blurb on A Life Intercepted: A Novel caught my eye, “Matthew “The Rocket” Rising had it all.  Falsely accused of a heinous crime with irrefutable evidence…all was lost.”  Matthew Rising won the Heisman trophy for best college football player twice, led his team to the national championship three times and was the number 1 draft pick in the NFL.  In Matthew’s mind all these were nothing compared to his marriage to Audrey.

Matthew was convicted of sexual assault and deviant sex with a minor based on a video of sex acts that did not show his face plus testimony of the three women who woke up with him in their bed.  He never made it to training camp, never made any money, and worst, his wife disappeared.

Paroled after 12 years he is forbidden to approach a minor, to work or live within half a mile of a daycare or school, completely broke, homeless and with no job prospects.  Matthew went back to his hometown to find his wife.  His oldest friend lets him stay in his cabin, which is just far enough from the Catholic convent and high school.   He has no intention to violate his parole, just to find Audrey and peace.

 

Matthew finds Audrey is living at the convent, where she planted a flower garden that memorializes Matthew’s final play in his last college football game.   Dee Dalton, 17 years old and a wanna be football quarterback, approaches Matthew to ask for his help.  Dee had been a fine young player but his throwing mechanics are messed up and he needs to learn from someone besides his high school coach.   Matthew initially says no, since that would violate his parole and land him back in prison, this time for life.

 

Audrey comes to Matthew and tells him that he owes it to her to coach Dee, that he cheated her of a family and a life and further that no one would ever know.  Matthew knows that it is all too likely that his nemesis, the person who framed him for the sexual assault, will in fact be watching him, looking for evidence he broke parole.  Nonetheless Matthew agrees to coach Dee as a sacrifice to show Audrey what she means to him.

 

Of course his nemesis videotapes the coaching sessions.  Each individual parole violation means 10 years in prison and Matthew and Dee meet over 70 times.  Matthew is arrested but only after demonstrating to the football loving world that both he and Dee are ready to play, Matthew at the NFL and Dee at high school, then college.

Tight Plot with a Unique Setting

We know all through the book that Matthew is innocent although we don’t know the details nor how – or whether – he will somehow win through.  Author Charles Martin keeps us in suspense until near the end.  He unfolds the plot through Matthew’s memories offset with the events as they occur.  We see Matthew willingly sacrifice his life to help Dee, initially for Audrey’s sake then for Dee’s, and through the memories of Matthew’s life with Audrey.

The novel is set behind the scenes of football, not the games themselves but the practices and the events after the games.  You do not have to understand or like football to enjoy the book because the game is the setting, not the purpose.

There were a few weak points, mostly in the trial that found Matthew guilty.  I thought of a couple points his lawyer could have made, such as whether the DNA evidence against Matthew included semen, whether his fingerprints were on the video camera, the fact it was dark, all of which could have cast some doubt in the jurors’ minds.  But the story is not about the trial.

Charles Martin’s  purpose isn’t to debate the merits of the case, but to show that it happened, that the evidence was overwhelming, that even Matthew’s lawyer and his wife believed him guilty.  This is the set up for the real meat of the novel, how Martin deals with gross injustice.

The resolution with Ginger, Matthew’s supposed victim was wonderful, but it required the woman to completely forego everything she had for something she had never wanted.  It was great to read but a bit far fetched.  Let’s hope that people are like that.

Characters

Matthew and Dee are well done.  Matthew remains loving and determined.  He knows exactly the value of the worldly success and the happy marriage he thought he had, and he has a fine perspective on which matters.

Wood and Ray, Matthew’s two friends, steal the show.  They are courageous, caring, willing to help Matthew, willing to more-or-less believe him.  The character I found the weakest was Audrey.  I understand she was incredibly hurt, wounded to near death by her husband’s betrayal, but it was incredible to me that she insisted he coach Dee even knowing it meant life imprisonment if caught.  She clearly did not expect the vindictive Ginger to spy on Matthew and videotape his movements, and why should she.  She believed Matthew guilty.

A Life Intercepted is a coming of age novel that brings four characters to adulthood, Matthew and Dee of course, and Audrey and Ginger too.  Matthew’s coming of age isn’t when he’s in his teens or college, but as he works with Dee and earlier, in some of his prison memories where he loses the hate and grows his way to redemption.

Thoughts on Redemption

A Life Intercepted: A Novel is one of the finest books I’ve read in a long time.  I read this concurrently with Memory by Lois Bujold, which gave a unique flavor to the experience. Both novels are about redemption and both have exotic settings, football with A Life Intercepted and the planet Barrayar in Memory.

The primary difference is in the nature of redemption.  Memory is all about Miles’ self-redemption after an act he did commit.  A Life Intercepted is about the redemption Matthew offers to his wife, his supposed victim, his fans, the young Mac for acts they committed, not what he had done.  Reading the two books together helped me see the difference and realized that A Life Intercepted first shows Matthew accepting the injustice, coming to peace internally, then offering that peace to the others who judged and rejected him.  It is a Christ-like redemption, not a private personal redemption.

The underlying themes of love, faith, redemption and sacrifice are timeless.  Combine those with excellent characters you care about, intense plot and good writing and you have a real winner.  Five stars.

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom, Contemporary Fable Fiction Review

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The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom is a fable meant to show the value of time, of living in the present and enjoying God’s gifts without fretting about more.

The story alternates between three people, Dor, a young man obsessed with measuring time, Sara Lemon, a teenager infatuated with a boy she feels is far above her touch, and Victor Delamonte, a rich man facing his imminent death by cancer and kidney failure.

Dor begins innocently to count the number of days from moon phase to moon phase, then moves into measuring time by a sundial and water clock. His counting becomes his obsession. He puts measuring ahead of caring for his family. Eventually a former playmate, Nim, sets himself as the king and builds the Tower of Babel. Nim seeks Dor’s help, and when spurned, orders Dor to leave the area. Dor and his beloved wife Alli end up living several miles away from their family. When Alli falls ill, Dor runs to the Tower to climb to heaven and stop time at its source.  When he climbs it the Tower falls.

Dor is the first person to count time and is punished for it by being forced to live in a cave for several thousand years and listen to all the misery that people find for themselves by focusing on time. Dor becomes Father Time.

Sarah is smart and fat. She wants cute Ethan but Ethan rejects her as cruelly as possible.  In despair Sarah decides to end her life.  She doesn’t think past her misery and her desire to hurt Ethan by hurting herself.  She wants less time.

Victor decides to pursue “immortality” by freezing himself just before death. He will not accept death and wants more time.  He knows his wife Grace will not accept this.

The story shows how Dor helps Sarah and Victor recognize the value of their lives as they are given them to live. Dor himself finds his punishment complete and is freed.

The Theme

The Time Keeper is an essay written as a story. Albom’s theme is that “man alone suffers a paralyzing fear…A fear of time running out.”

I agree with his premise – to a point. One of the challenges in my Catholic faith is the balance between planning and trusting in God. Christ himself likened the kingdom to the five wise virgins who brought extra lamp oil and the five foolish ones who came ill-prepared for a long wait.  Yet the lilies of the fields and the creatures of the earth live without planning and God provides.

We as humans are accountable for how we use time, not how we measure it or long for it or hope it runs faster or slower.

The Punishment

It disturbed me that Dor is punished so severely.  His offense was to give the ability to measure time to the world.  Does that truly warrant several thousand years listening to the world’s misery?  Or was his sin more that he prized his measurements above all else, that he focused not on the gift of time, the gift of life, but only measured it.  It reminds me of the people who enjoy sports statistics more than they enjoy watching the game.

Thought Provoking

Overall I found this an enjoyable book that had an interesting concept.  The characters were very well done.  Sarah could have been a cardboard cutout but she felt and acted like a real person.  Victor too was more than the prototypical rich man obsessed with taking it with him.

Albom’s writing style is sparse and fast.  He doesn’t have extra scenes or extra characters or extra words.  Everything fits together beautifully.

The book is very fast reading; I read it in an evening, about two hours.  (I am a fast reader, so it might take two evenings for someone who reads at an average speed.)

The Time Keeper will stay with me. I doubt I will reread it, but the message of treating each moment as the precious gift that it is will stay with me.

Overall I recommend this to anyone. If you don’t care for the religious overtones then read and enjoy it for the story.

4 Stars