Book Trailer: Frank Portman, King Dork

Table of Contents: The Continuity Girl

Author: Leah McLaren
Publisher/Year: HarperCollins, 2006
Synopsis: Meredith Moore is the perfect continuity girl. An on-set film script supervisor, it is her job to make sureevery frame of the picture is consistent with the one before. She is the errorcatcher. The needle-in-the-haystack finder. A cigarette in the left hand when itshould be in the right, a prematurely melted ice cube in a half-empty glass ofScotch, a stray lock of an actor’s hair—these are the details by which shemeasures out her life.

But when Meredith wakes up on the morning of her 35th birthday yearning for a baby, her personal senseof continuity is thrown into flux. Determined not to marry, she impulsivelyflees to London to reunite with her eccentric single mother and accept a new jobon a well-known producer’s film set. Her covert plan: to become a Sperm Banditand find an unsuspecting donor to father her child.

Navigating London’s murky social waters, Meredith is thrown into a strange new story, one that quickly spins outof control. In her quest to get pregnant on her own terms, she will accidentallyuncover a web of secrets that will change the way she envisions both her workinglife and the nature of love.


What Others Have To Say
Quill & Quire
"McLaren’s writing teems with vivid detail and nicely drawn characters."

NOW Magazine
"...just too superficial ..."

The Georgia Straight
"...almost entirely obsessed with surface..."

Book Mark: Blog Hopping

So today we are participating in our first blog hop, courtesy of Crazy For Books. This is a brilliant idea, and we really should have participated sooner. We have been hopping all day, and are going to get right back at it now!

If you are visiting via the blog hop, great to have you hop along here!!

Adaptation: Election

Book Review: Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher/Year: Penguin, 2002

Review:
The Black Plague that decimated Europe during the 1600’s is the setting for Geraldine Brooks’ novel Year of Wonders. Like many recent novels that have their fictional grounding in non-fiction events and people, Brooks has fastened her story around a few letters regarding a small village in France that quarantined themselves during the Plague. Little is know about the village of Eyam but Brooks has weaved a compelling humanistic tale regarding what may have transpired within the segregated boundaries of that village.

Year of Wonders is told from the point of view of twenty-year old widow Anna Frith. Anna works as a servant to the young minister, Mr. Mompellion and his wife Elinor in order to make ends meet after her husband dies in a horrible mining accident. She also boards a newly arrived tailor, Mr. Viccars, who inadvertently introduces the Plague to the small community through a single bolt of cloth. It is this one seemingly insignificant delivery that sets off a chain of devastating events for Anna and her village.

Mr. Viccars is the first victim of the disease and he warns Anna to burn all the cloth to prevent the disease’s dispersal. Despite her best efforts, she is unable to burn it all, and the town soon begins to succumb to the deadly disease. Anna’s two small children are among the first to die, leaving her alone and inconsolably bereft.

She becomes single-minded about taking care of Mr. Mompellion and his wife, joining them in their ministrations and comfort of the ill. When the local healer is the victim of mass hysteria, Anna and Elinor begin studying her healing art of herbs and work to provide a viable antidote to the death ceaselessly surrounding them.

Despite their best efforts, nothing stops the disease or its ugly psychological effects on the villagers from spreading, as both continue to ravage the village and its families with no set path or reason. The realization that nothing is working leads to the conception of a most desperate action. Mr. Mompellion forcibly suggests, and the community follows along, to isolate themselves from the rest of the district to keep the disease from spreading to their neighbors.

After a year, the disease begins to fade and the community is faced with starting over. It is at this point that the plot becomes a little too contrived, a little too obvious. Brooks needed a strong, independent ending suitable for Anna, whom she took from a simple character to a fully realized person throughout the story. Anna deserved such an ending but what is provided rings just a tad hallow. It lacks the aura of believability that haunts all preceding plot points.


And certainly throughout the rest of the novel, Brooks creates a very believable and fantastic narrator in Anna. Anna’s emotional and psychological evolution occurs in direct relation to the evolution of this horrible event. She is a woman keenly aware of her circumstances and the brutal times in which she must exist, and tries to make the best of it for herself and her community. Her story alone is compelling and more than compensates for the periodic lapses into modern-day sensibilities that creep into Brooks’ writing.

Anna’s growth and maturity stems from her interactions with the colorful cast of secondary characters. There is her drunkard father Joss who meets a death perhaps more cruel than the Plague, and her stepmother Aphra who is more than a little unstable. There is also Anys Gowdie, the local ‘witch’ through whom Anna learns much about the nature of healing. And of course there is Mr. Mompellion and Elinor, whose mysterious relationship eventually leads to emotionally charged confrontations for all involved.

Brooks sets a very even tone to the novel that maintains the reader’s interest even through some of the more gritty plot points. The narrative flows freely, with each person and event contributing to the urgency of the moments in which they unfold. She paints a very depressingly realistic picture of a very dark time in history without trying to pack too many details into the story. As such, the story does not get bogged down in specifics, a situation that can result in an unfulfilling start-stop reading experience.

For sure, the story is solemn and depressing but there are also moments of great light and humanity that temper out the ugliness of the situation. Brooks does not hold back in her descriptions of the brutality of the Plague and the villagers towards each other. This is of course leads to some graphic death scenes and violent acts. But this is accurate of any hard time that befalls us as our instinct to survive takes over, regardless of the cost. But Brooks uses Anna and Elinor to counteract the ugliness, to provide moments of hope and compassion not only for the characters but for the reader as well.

This historical period was all dirty and illness and confusion and superstition and cruelty. Brooks has her finger on all these themes and threads them through the various events and characterizations with a keen, observant eye. She obviously did her research, as indicated by her employment throughout of the vocabulary of the time (which can slow down the reading process). The words lend an authenticity to the story that adds to the historical resonance of Brooks prose.

Few books about the Plague look at average people and how their spiritual and economic circumstances dictated their varying reactions to it. With this novel, Brooks has done an admirable job of putting faces and names to those people and giving them a vibrant voice. Year of Wonders is a worthy read for anyone interested in history, and for anyone interested in the progress of humanity in the face of great devastation.

Book Mark: IACP Book Award Nominees 2010

In March, the International Association of Culinary Professionals announced the nominees for their 2010 book awards:

American:
DamGoodSweet by David Guas and Raquel Pelzel
My New Orleans by John Besh
New American Table by Marcus Samuelson
Real Cajun by Donald Link and Paula Disbrowe

Baking:
All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray
My Bread by Jim Lahey
Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Chefs and Restaurants:
Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller
Bottega Favorita by Frank Stitt
How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis

Children, Youth, and Family:
Baking Kids Love by Cindy Mushet and Sur La Table
Mad Hungry by Lucinda Scala Quinn
Williams-Sonoma Family Meals by Maria Helm Sinsky and Williams-Sonoma

Compilations:
Cooking Light Way to Cook by Cooking Light magazine
Gourmet Today by Ruth Reichl
Southern Living Comfort Food by Southern Living magazine

First Book (The Julia Child Award):
Seasonal Spanish Food by Jose Pizarro
The Brazilian Table by Yaro Castro Roberts and Richard Roberts
The New Portuguese Table by David Leite

Food Photography and Styling:
Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook by Chris and Idie Hastings
Nicholas by Nicholas Harary and Peter Zuorick
Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Friends by Alison Attenborough and Jamie Kimm

Food Reference and Technical:
The Deluxe Food Lover's Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst
The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts by the French Culinary Institute
Why Italians Love to Talk About Food by Elena Kostioukovitch

General:
Get Cooking by Mollie Katzen
Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion by Stephanie Alexander
Williams-Sonoma Family Meals by Maria Helm Sinsky and Williams-Sonoma

Health and Special Diet:
The Golden Door Cooks at Home by Dean Rucker
Lucid Food by Louisa Shafta
The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen by Rebecca Katz

International:
Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo
Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Francis Mallmann
The Songs of Sapa: Stories and Recipes from Vietnam by Luke Nguyen

Literary Food Writing:
Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York by William Grimes
The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart

Professional Kitchens:
Baking and Pastry by the Culinary Institute of America
How to Bake Bread by Michael Kalanty
International Cuisine by the International Culinary Schools at the Art Institute

Single Subject:
Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen
Go Fish by Al Brown
Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Francis Mallmann

Wine, Beer, or Spirits:
The Finest Wines of Champagne by Michael Edwards
The King of Vodka by Linda Himelstein
World Whiskey by Charles MacLean