The Island Horse

From the book cover:
Ellie believes that she will live in her little village on the coast of Nova Scotia for always. But when her father gets a job on Sable Island, she must say farewell to her beloved home and her mother's final resting place. Not even the idea of seeing the wild horses that roam the island can ease the pain of leaving. And after arriving on the sandy, windswept crescent of land, Ellie feels adrift and alone...until one afternoon when she wakens on a dune to find herself looking into the curious eyes of a wild stallion. Little by little, as the days pass, Ellie gets closer to the beautiful chocolate-colored horse. Yet she soon discovers something that could take him away from his home, his herd and her. Ellie has lost so much already. Will she lose her island horse, too?

My Review:
Susan Hughes clearly has only the best intention and inspiration for writing the novel, but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Admittedly, The Island Horse is far from hell but it is rather dull and by no means a pleasurable page turning read.

Set in the early 1800s, Ellie is a nine-year-old dealing with the death of her mother and a move away from the only home she's ever known to a remote island that she laments is not fit for human life. Perhaps because I'm use to modern kids who tend to be coddled by over-protective parents, I have a hard to finding Ellie's maturity believable. She's nine years old and baking bread, preparing meals and taking care of herself for long, lonely days while her father works.

The plot development in this novelette is very rough. Not enough quality time is given to making Ellie's attachment to her island horse, Orchid, believable or even her budding relationship with the only other little girl on Sable Island. There's a lot of untapped potential as far as the plot goes. This was especially evident after I read the Arthur's Note at the end of the book. It's a brief history lesson about the real Sable Island and how Susan Hughes made the decision to write this novelette.

This book is geared towards children seven to 10 years old. The writing is very simple and straightforward. There are no pictures but there are small black and white sketches at the beginning of each chapter.

2.5/5

About the book:
The Island Horse by Susan Hughes
ISBN: 978-1554535927
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Date of publish: March 1, 2012
Pages: 160
S.R.P.: $16.95

About the author:
Susan Hughes is an award-winning author whose books include Case Closed?, No Girls Allowed, Earth to Audrey and Virginia. She has loved horses since she was a child and has long dreamed of setting a story on Sable Island. Susan lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Murder on the Orient Express

From the book cover:
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.

Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again.
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My Review:
Murder on the Orient Express is up there with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Peril at End House, when it comes to expecting the unexpected. The tone of Orient Express is very different from Agatha Christie's other Hercule Poirot mysteries. Without his trusted sidekick Hastings, Poirot is much more likable. He has no one to boast to or to diminish so he just goes about solving the case.

This novel also stands out against Christie's other mysteries for its pro-America leanings. On several occasions through the novel various characters praise America for its modern forward-thinking leaning and its multiculturalism.

Unlike many of Christie's other murder mysteries, there is a moral dilemma involved in the solving of this case. Will Poirot side with traditional justice or back the vigilantes?

Murder on the Orient Express is a great book to take along for a three-hour flight or road trip. It's a quick, entertaining and pleasant read.

4/5

Lord Edgware Dies

From the book cover:
Supper at the Savoy! Hercule Poirot, the famous little detective, was enjoying a pleasant little supper party there as the guest of Lady Edgware, formerly Jane Wilkinson, a beautiful young American actress. During the conversation Lady Edgware speaks of the desirability of getting rid of her husband, Lord Edgware, since he refuses to divorce her, and she wants to marry the Duke of Merton. M. Poirot jocularly replies that getting rid of husbands is not his speciality. Within Twenty-four hours, however, Lord Edgware dies.
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My Review:
More than providing entertaining murder mysteries, Agatha Christie's novels - for me anyways- are a glimpse of the society of the early twentieth century. Hercule Poirot is suppose to be a well-informed and progressive detective, yet he makes a lot of generalizations about race, ethnicity and sex. When characterizing one of the main characters in this mystery he comments that she is a Jewess and thus shrewd and possesses a love of money.

In other novels, Poirot has made similar stereotypical comments about characters from various ethnic groups and in most brandishing some form of stereotype about women. I've come to the conclusion that Hercule Poirot and maybe Agatha Christie did not care much for actors. They are usually portrayed in less than a flattering light, and in this mystery it's no different.

Lord Edgware Dies is definitely one of Agatha Christie's best murder mysteries. The characters are all strange in their own unique way, and the plot is somewhat feasible which allowed me to actually solve the mystery on my own. And for once I can say there are no loose ends.

Another reason, I enjoyed this novel is Hastings. This time around his thoughts touch on Poirot annoying habits such a boasting and ridicule Knowing that he's just as annoyed with Poirot's arrogance, makes him that much more likable.

4/5

The Long March Home

From the book cover:
The Long March Home tells the story of three generations of women. Agnes, a young Canadian, goes to China as a missionary and falls in love with a Chinese medical student. Growing anti-western sentiment forces her to return home to Nova Scotia, where she discovers she is pregnant. Meihua, their American-born daughter, travels to China in search of the father she never met and winds up marrying a Chinese man, but the Cultural Revolution tears their lives apart. With both parents imprisoned, it falls to the family's illiterate servant, Yao, to shield their daughter, Yezi, and her brother from family tragedy, poverty and political discrimination, negotiating their survival during the revolution she barely understands. Only after her mother is released, does Yezi learn about her foreign grandmother, Agnes. Curious about her ancestry, Yezi travels to the U.S. to meet Agnes and learn about her life in China with the man her mother still longs to find.

My Review:
The Long March Home has the skeletal outline of what could have been an epic story about three generations of women. Unfortunately it all falls flat. 

Meihua narrators the first half of the story, which opens with her telling her husband, Lon, that she is pregnant with their third third child. The couple wonder whether it is wise to bring another child into the world in their situation. Lon is an ex-convict (it's hinted that his crime was political but that's never confirmed) and Meihua is half-American so there is concern that negative stigma will ruin their unborn child's life. Their oldest son, Dahai, was recently assigned to a mediocre high school, despite having the grades required for the best school in the area.

When the child, Yezi, is two years old, Meihua is arrested on charges of sabotaging the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to 13 years in jails. During Meihua incarceration, Yezi takes over the narration. Yezi's narration starts as the perspective of a six-year-old girl and continues to the end of the novel when she is a 15-year-old living with her maternal grandmother in Boston. Towards the end, the story seems very pro-western ideals. Yezi likes the freedom that life in a America provides and questions why anyone would want to go back to China where she was always afraid of what people would think.

I'm disappointed that there is no first-person narration from Meihua's mother, Agnes. She's the one who first ventured to China as a missionary. It would have been really nice to hear her story in her words, rather than having a teenaged Yezi summarized her grandmother's dairies.  I also found a lot of the dialogue and characters flat. It sort of brings to mind witnesses testifying in court. All of the intentions are good and everyone is sweet and kind.

3/5

About the book:

The Long March Home

ISBN:9781926708270

Publisher: Inanna Publications

http://www.inanna.ca/longmarch-over.html

Date of Publication: November 2011

Cloud Atlas

Epic. It's such an over-used word when it comes to describing movies and novels, but I'm afraid there's no better word to describe David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It's so awesome that a major motion picture, starring Halle Berry, is due out this October.

Cloud Atlas is a giant puzzle that spans the space of centuries. It's told via six short stories.

'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing' introduces the readers to a 19th century notary from San Francisco who has travelled to a small island in the pacific to conduct business on behalf of his employer. In the journal, Mr. Ewing speaks of his devotion to his religion and of the ills of the societies that he is visiting. His story stops mid-sentence approximately 30 pages in.

From Adam Ewing's stories, we jump to 1931 in 'Letters from Zedelghem', and the story of a young composer by the name of Robert Frobisher. Frobisher tells his stories via a series of letters to his dear friend Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher starts off his narrative running out on a hotel bill. He makes his way to Belgium where he secures employment with a well-known composer by the name of Vyvyan Ayrs. Ayrs has lost his sight and requires Frobisher to write down his compositions.  Frobisher winds up involved in an affair with Ayrs' wife, Jocasta. Frobisher's narrative ends just as his affair with Jocasta has ended its honeymoon phase.While staying with the Ayrs, Frobisher comes across the pacific journal of Adam Ewing.

'Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery' takes the reader to Buenas Yerbas, California in the 1970s. Luisa Rey is a young reporter who makes the acquaintance of a 66-year-old Rufus Sixsmith in an elevator and earns his trust almost immediately. Sixsmith is a British scientist with a critical report about the hugely powerful Seabord Corporation's Swannekke Island power plant. After her encounter with Sixsmith, Luisa gets on the trail of the story. When Sixsmith is found dead Luisa gets a hold of his letters from Robert Frobisher. Having just gotten hold of Sixsmith's report, Luisa's car is driven off the road, and so end her section.

In 'The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish' we move forward and across the Atlantic to London in the early 21st century. Timothy Cavendish is a 60-something-year-old vanity press publisher who gets himself into some trouble when one of his authors winds up in prison for murder. The author's thug brothers threaten Cavendish with bodily harm in order to secure their brother's share of the profits from the novel that has become a best seller. Not having enough money to pay off the brothers, Cavendish leaves his office with his briefcase and a manuscript titled 'Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery', seeking help from his own brother. Cavendish's brother tricks him into committing himself to a nursery home. The section ends as Cavendish suffers a stroke trying to escape from the nursery home.

'An Orison of Sonmi -451' takes the reader to Korea in the distant future to a corpocratic world where clones (fabricants) do all of the jobs that humans (purebloods) find undesirable. Somni -451 is a fabricant who ascends the limitation set by her creators. Sonmi was designed to work in a diner but ends up working at a University after disguised union members identify her as having the potential to achieve ascention. Union is a group bent on revolt from the totalitarian society by aiming to give fabricants the same rights as purebloods while putting a stop to the over-consumption that is on track to destroy their society. Sonmi's section ends as she and a pureblood friend and mentor are forced to flee a movie theatre where they are watching an old film titled 'The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.'

'Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rthin' After' takes the reader to a post-apocalyptic future. The legend of Sonmi -451 has survived and she is revered as a god in the backwards world of Hawaii in the future. Our narrator this time around is a young man by the name of Zachry. Zachry watches Sonmi's story through a futuristic recording device that he sneaks from Meronym, a visitor from an alternate society that is technologically advanced.

After this section, the story reverts back into itself with a conclusion to each of the previous sections.

4/5