The Towpath: A Time Travel Suspense Thriller by Jonathan David Walter; The Intricate Fragility of Time Travel

 

The Towpath: A Time Travel Suspense Thriller by Jonathan David Walter; The Intricate Fragility of Time Travel

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Time travel can be a precarious subject with the possibilities and paradoxes. Like going back in time to kill Adolf Hitler or prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination could lead to history changing for the better or worse. Perhaps the Soviet Union becomes the victor in the Cold War or another dictator is created from the ashes of World War I or II. Imagine going back in time and accidentally killing or falling in love with your ancestor. You wouldn’t be there to travel back but then who killed or fell in love with them? What about seeing the future knowing what is to come but being unable to prevent it? Time travel can be very excruciating and produces many migraines to figure out the rules and fiction has explored the concept in different ways. Jonathan David Walter’s The Towpath is an example of a novel that explores the complex intricacies and fragile strands that the concept of time stands on.

A mysterious character called The Redeemer is in mourning for her daughter, Hannah, who committed suicide. She is searching for a powerful medallion which will allow the wearer to go back in time so she can prevent the girl’s death. Unfortunately, the medallion is accidentally found by Aaron Porter, a teen boy. Once he learns what the medallion can do, Aaron wants to use it to find his missing brother, Owen. The discovery puts Aaron and his friends, Simon and Libby in immediate danger as The Redeemer pursues them with the assistance of a group of Iroquois warriors that she gathered from the 17th century. 

The Towpath has plenty of depth, particularly with its main protagonist and antagonist. The Redeemer alternates between troubled and terrifying. While searching for Aaron, she gives one of his classmates a particularly painful and grisly death. She is willing to kill for the medallion or send the Iroquois to do it and has no conscience when it comes to inflicting pain on the teen. In her desire to save her child from death, she has no qualms about inflicting it on other children.

However, The Redeemer is not completely soulless. Her intense grief over her daughter’s suicide is very real. Her telepathic conversations with Hannah’s younger self pours out the unhinged rage and despair over the girl’s death and the extreme lengths that she goes through to save her. This is a woman whose traumatized grief has driven her insane.

There is a possibility that time travel itself has played a hand in The Redeemer’s cracking mental state. She has completely disfigured herself and has become desensitized to the historical violence in which she encountered. She has some bouts of kindness such as helping the Iroquois in their fights against white settlers but they’re almost always with the specific goal in mind to save Hannah. As she travels back and forth, The Redeemer loses parts of herself more and more until in one heartbreaking moment she is rejected by Hannah who is frightened of and angry at her. She has become the person that she didn’t want to be because of her grief that has eaten away inside her. 

Aaron is someone who if they were on the same side, would understand what the Redeemer is going through. He too has felt tremendous loss. He has no memories of his birth father. His stepfather, a kindly veteran, died. His mother lives in a drugged and depressed stupor so he is cared for by Owen.The loss that he feels after Owen disappears is just as harrowing as The Redeemer’s mourning. He is not just mourning his brother, but someone who had become another father figure to him shortly after losing his last one. 

The twin stories of grief and obsession are fascinating parallels because it serves as a warning. The Redeemer stands as someone that Aaron is in danger of becoming if his sadness and anger overpower him. He could become just as driven, just as heartless, and just as insane as the woman who is chasing him. 

The intricacies of time travel are brilliantly explored particularly after Aaron and The Redeemer both travel backwards in time and encounter Hannah. She is bruised, morose, and detached. Aaron has to help the troubled girl and repair the rift between her and her mother, without running into his past self. However, he desperately wants to warn and protect Owen from his own fate. 

There are plenty of existentialist questions that are asked. If they rescue them from these specific incidents, are they really saving them or postponing the inevitable? Hannah is clearly troubled and her mother’s presence unnerves her. In her drive to save Hannah, is The Redeemer airbrushing the past and not acknowledging her own culpability in creating the tormented soul that Hannah became? Would Aaron’s knowledge of Owen’s future drive him closer to his brother or further away? If they are saved by their loved one’s trips to the past, then what happens to them in the future? They wouldn’t have this drive to travel back in time or maybe not the ability, so they wouldn’t be able to go back to save them. Would running into their past selves lead to a paradox by their mere presence and would they have any memories of this meeting or the circumstances that led to it? 

These questions are addressed and explored in ways that weigh these potential consequences and change things for better and sometimes for worse. 

When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption by Frances-Marie Coke

 

When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption by Frances-Marie Coke 

Spoilers: When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption by Frances-Marie Coke is the second book in a row dealing with intergenerational conflicts concerning mother and daughters after Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones by P.A. Swanborough. While the latter trod a thin line between the reality of the family in question’s situation and the fantasy of their pagan past, the former has no such detours into the fantastic. It is firmly set in the reality of racism, poverty, classicism, gender inequality, domestic violence, and generational conflicts. All of this is in a setting that is quite familiar with this blog. In fact, it was a setting that was quite common in the books that I read and reviewed last year: Jamaica.

In 2002, Zarah left New York for her childhood home of Jamaica. Her parents, Esther and Bradley and grandmother, Naomi are worried and anxious about their daughter's sorrowful return and her memories of an unhappy abusive marriage left behind in New York. Esther’s concern is also joined by loving but strident remainders that she told Zarah that her marriage wouldn't end well. Her kind anxious demeanor often features acidic attacks on Zarah’s choices and personality. This behavior causes their already volatile relationship to become even more strained and leads to threats of estrangement between mother and daughter. Naomi views the conflict with empathy and understanding. After all she had been through something similar with Esther, just as her mother, Pearlie and Aunt Eudora had been through with her, and their mother, Agatha had been through with them. So the Reader is treated to over 100 years of Jamaican history seen through the eyes of five generations of six fascinating women.

What is particularly fascinating and compelling about this book is that it ignores the touristy side of Jamaica. Oh, some of it’s there: the beautiful landscape, the friendly hospitable locals, the Rastafarian religion and its beliefs. There is even a shout out to author Sir Ian Fleming, who made Jamaica his home as he wrote his James Bond novels. But they are largely left in the background. Instead, we are shown what life was and is like for the locals and all is definitely not paradise for the people who live there. 

The forefront of the book features many of the truths that lie within Jamaica’s sandy beaches and reggae music. It is a history of colonization and racism. It is a present of poverty, economic disparity, and domestic violence. These issues are not treated with bold overlines and dramatic emphasis. Instead they are seen and experienced by the people, specifically the family that encounter them.

We are first told of Zarah’s return and her fractured relationship with her parents. We are then treated to a flashback of an affair that Esther had which ended in her divorce and Zarah’s anger at her mother. The majority of the book consists of flashbacks that begin in 1900 with Agatha, Zarah’s great great grandmother and Esther’s great grandmother. Through this family, we see the conflicts that mark one generation and cause friction with the next. 

Agatha works in a sleepy town and is dominated by her religious family, particularly her father. She is told by women around her to just accept whatever treatment that she gets from men. With only that advice in hand, she enters into a relationship with Mas’ Watson, a well-off farmer. Watson gives Agatha two daughters: Eudora and Pearlie. Agatha works to gather and tag bananas to help support her family but can’t avoid the stares and innuendo that people have about her daughters. 

People gossip about Pearlie’s darker skin compared to Eudora who is much lighter. They marvel at the latter’s perceived beauty and predict that she will go far in life. They shake their heads in dread at Pearlie and believe that she will have a future of hardship. Even Agatha’s attempts to straighten Pearlie’s hair or give her lemon juice to lighten her complexion do not hide her real appearance. 

Many degrade the young girl and Mas’ Watson shows preferential treatment towards Eudora. This shows that even when many people are from the same race, there is unfortunately still division within that race. Sometimes there are stereotypical racist beliefs about the difference between people who are from the same basic skin color but whose shades are darker or lighter and hair is straight or curly.

The scrutiny of Agatha’s daughter’s different skin tones and accusations of whether they had different fathers fill the sisters’ lives up to when they attend school. The outrage becomes so bad that after she is raped, Pearlie runs away. She resides in another village where she gives birth to her daughter, Naomi and enters into a relationship with Bertie, a man whose family helps the single mother get back on her feet. Unfortunately, Pearlie’s happiness is cut short and Naomi finds herself alone and friendless like her mother. 

Naomi ends up living with her cold religious Aunt Eudora. Eudora at first doesn’t even want to take in the girl but she is convinced to do so because of her commitment to Christian duty and how it would look within her community to reject her own flesh and blood. Out of rebellion, Naomi attends the local Catholic church and rejects many of the spiritual teachings from her aunt. 

Naomi falls in love with Miles, a musician who spins fantasies within her about moving to America and starting a new life. That isn’t all that he spins within her. No sooner is she pregnant with her daughter, Esther, than she too is left behind like her mother and grandmother before her.

In the most harrowing section, Naomi enters an unhappy second marriage to Pastor Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s abusive and controlling nature is present as he micromanages her schedule down to prayer times and how long she can meet her friends. He won’t allow her to find a career outside of caring for his home and church. In a very classicist gesture, he forces her to stop using the Jamaican patois and speak the standard British English.

 Because of her limited relationship with her biological family and limited resources, Naomi is trapped in an abusive marriage with someone who she thought was a man of God but turned out to be someone who thought that he was God and had a private church of two worshippers: his wife and stepdaughter. 

A very terrifying encounter breaks Bloomfield’s hold on Naomi and Esther and the two rebuild their lives elsewhere. Naomi reverts to the spiritual beliefs that had always provided her comfort and in an act of defiance against her ex, reverts back to the Jamaican patois that he ridiculed. 

With the generations of Agatha, Pearlie, Eudora, and Naomi we see mothers struggling with problems of racism, poverty, religious dogma, and domestic violence. Each one works and hopes that the younger generation will succeed where they failed. With Esther and Zarah, we see the results of those dashed dreams, the desire to escape, and how that unhappiness and disappointment played into their relationships as mother and daughter and the men in their lives. 

Even though Esther had a comparatively happy marriage to Bradley as compared to her mother’s with Brookfield and great-grandmother’s with Mas’ Watson, even she had troubles. In 1988, Esther reunited with her former boyfriend, Patrick who lived an affluent life in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She had been living a meager existence with Bradley scraping for every dollar and was growing tired of the struggle. She dreamed not only of a different wealthy life in Florida but of the dashing man who could have given it to her.

 Thoughts become actions during a hurricane and Esther ends up with a miscarriage, a divorce, and a resentful daughter. What was truly heartbreaking in hindsight was that Bradley is an easygoing, steady, kind hearted man. His laid back nature could have provided a contrast to Esther’s more rigid strident domineering control over Zarah’s life. Zarah could have had an ally when arguing with her mother. Instead she reacted to strictness with rebellion and ran away. Esther only realizes when Zarah returns that Bradley has a peculiar strength in his blundering kindness that she overlooked. 

Zarah is considered the great hope of the family. Her mother puts enormous pressure on her to succeed well in school and have the right friends. She becomes something of an overachiever with dreams of escaping Jamaica. However, she also falls in love with Damien, considering him a reprieve from her mother’s tight control and secrets which caused her family to implode. 

Unlike her antecedents, who only dreamt of a life away from the island, Zarah managed to get away and form a life for herself. But her independence came with a price tag: that of being married to the abusive Damien. 

The freedom that Zarah thought that she would experience being away from Jamaica becomes even more of a trap in New York. She is beaten, insulted, and criticized. Worse, she is isolated in a new country where she is an immigrant and has very few friends. 

However, Zarah continues to work and study, raising money in secret. She befriends a woman who takes a maternal interest into her life and helps steer her into a good direction. Zarah’s drive to get out of the abusive situation shows her to be someone who learned enough from the earlier generation to plan an escape and make a new life for herself even if it means retreating to the homes of Mom and Dad for a while.

Agatha, Pearlie, Eudora, Naomi, Esther, and Zarah all lived very difficult traumatic troubled lives but they found strength in other places. Sometimes it was through close friendships, surrogate family members, their religious faith, future goals, or aspirations. Most importantly they learned from each other. Even when they didn’t always get along and fought endlessly, their inner strength and love for each other is always shown as are their hopes that the daughters will have better lives than the mother’s. 

Sometimes those dreams didn’t always come true and depended on the next generation to make it happen. Most importantly they had each other to find comfort, sanctuary, and guides to see them through the tough times and learn from them.

Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog by P.A. Swanborough; Mystical and Relatable Novel About Mothers and Daughters

 Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog by P.A. Swanborough; Mystical and Relatable Novel About Mothers and Daughters

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also available on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers: I come from a family of mostly women with my mother, myself, and four other sisters as well as two brothers. So I understand what conflicts between mothers and daughters are like. That's probably why P.A. Swanborough’s book, Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones: A Tale of Grief and Ghosts and One Small Dog resonates so much with me. It's about four generations of mothers and daughters who get on one another's nerves but still love each other.

The Coombe Family that resides in Ty Merched (The Women's House) are the type of family that invites suspicious rumors and haunting stories from the other residents in the town of Swansea, Wales. There is just something odd and peculiar about them. 

 Lizzie, the matriarch is celebrating her 100th birthday and she spends most of her time talking to the ghosts that live around her house. Her daughter, Myfanwy feels things strongly and is barely hiding an explosive temper. Myfanwy’s daughter, Sarah Maud practically lives in an alcoholic stupor and haunts the local pub. Sarah Maud’s daughter, Jenner wanders through the woods on endless treks and is fascinated by ancient powers that her ancestors might have had. 

The Coombe women have a love-hate relationship that threatens to explode during the week of Lizzie's birthday when Jenner goes missing, old lovers are reunited, pastor Rev. Morgan incites his flock against the Coombes, a group of hippies and other outsiders show up and befriend the family, a friendly dog appears as a guide, and the family ghosts are begging to be heard by the living.

Red Gifts in the Garden of Stones treads a thin line between Contemporary Fantasy and Historical Fiction/Reality. It describes the real conflicts of a family of women in the late 1960’s in rural Wales but there is always a poetic mystical sense of the other world in the background.

At the forefront, we are given a story of four generations of mothers and daughters who vie with each other and the society around them. These are women who alternate between loving and irritating each other.

Lizzie is in mourning for her late husband and family members. Because of her deep grief, she finds it hard to be emotionally close to the living, often creating friction between herself and her descendants. One could see her behavior as signs of Alzheimer's or dementia but there is just as much evidence that she hangs onto those old memories of her ancestors for emotional reasons. The present is too difficult to live with so she prefers the past and willingly withdraws from those around her.

Lizzie's behavior has been going on since her daughter Myfanwy was very young so naturally she would be bitter and resentful. She is caught between her distant mother and troubled daughter and granddaughter. She is someone who may have had dreams of getting away but family responsibilities tied her down. Now she is stuck at Ty Merched looking after a barely functioning family and becoming more resentful. She too feels abandoned by the man who left her and Sarah Maud and is isolated from the community that spreads rumors about her behind her back and sometimes to her face. 

To face the world around her, Myfanwy barely bites back sardonic comments and expressions and a rising temper that strikes back at everyone else in ire.

Of all of the family members, Myfanwy is the one who has the most potential to one day snap and commit violence, like a vengeance goddess raining her wrath on those who would hurt her and her family.

If Myfanwy reacts in outward anger, Sarah Maud does so inwardly. She isn't a potential danger to anyone but herself. Like her mother and grandmother, she too had been abandoned by the man that impregnated her. Even worse, he was a prominent towns member who refused to acknowledge his one-time mistress and illegitimate daughter. So Sarah Maud lives every day in the same town as the father of her child who is well known but ignores her. She lives with a constant reminder of a moment of youthful indiscretion and weakness which became a lifetime of regret. 

Sarah Maud is practically the living embodiment of a wailing ghost. She drowns her sorrows in alcohol and takes to her bed to escape sleep. She retreats into Depression like her mother does to her rages and grandmother does to her memories.

The fourth member of their family, Jenner, is also a product of this difficult environment of three older women who are in their own worlds. Since Jenner finds no comfort at home with a melancholic mother, choleric grandmother, and nostalgic great-grandmother, she has often had to rely on herself. This is an upbringing that she takes all too easily to heart.

Jenner does what her antecedents are too afraid or too tied down to: she leaves Swansea. She goes on long nature walks, sometimes for hours and even days on end. On one of those trips, she is accompanied by a small dog called, originally enough, Smalldog. Her trips are a way of distancing herself from the problems at home and give her a chance to get away from it all, even if temporarily. Her connection to nature gives her the emotional connections that her family cannot provide.

As striking as their unhappiness is, the Coombes’ loyalty resonates just as strongly. There are moments where the character's love for each other is clearly visible. Lizzie defends Jenner in front of a nosy Rev. Morgan. Myfanwy and Lizzie hover over a bed ridden Sarah Maud. Myfanwy barely restrains a clenched fist as she hears a hate filled speech directed at her family particularly her mother and daughter. 

The older women realize many of their flaws in parenting led to the moment when Jenner goes missing and vow to be better people, which they take to the letter. This is a family that are experts in supporting each other and driving each other crazy. Anyone who is a mother or a daughter can certainly relate to the “I love you, even if I don't always like you” mindset.

There are other traces of the real world of the 1960’s around them. A group of hippies arrive and take some of the weird labels often given to the women of Ty Merched. In a case of one outsider group bonding with another, they befriend the Coombes to the point that Sarah Maud in particular bonds with one of them, hovering close to a romance.

The status and roles of women have changed, particularly as we see Jenner. Unlike her older relatives, she isn't contented to stay where she is and is more self-assured when it comes to dealing with men. She won't be caught up in a haze of romantic nostalgia, rage, or despair when a relationship ends. She will just move on and forward.

One of the more humorous anecdotes in this book is the Swansea residents' reaction to the historic Moon Landing. A world shaking news event may be important to most people, but not them. It barely gets a mention in the book, just a non sequitur sentence solely to say when this book is specifically set. It has that rural town attitude in which world events sometimes are seen as not as important as the events around them. “Forget that Armstrong fellow. Did you hear what Lizzie Coombe did yesterday?! That's the real scoop!!”

That realistic view of small town life doesn't just play into their interest in local gossip but also in how easily mob mentality takes hold especially when influenced by religious figures. Rev. Morgan, the latest in a long family line of pastors, is particularly influential towards his parishioners. One of his favorite topics is suspicions towards the Coombe Family. 

Morgan creates dissent within his flock and drops hints here and there that the four women are witches and highlights the strange things that happen around them. The appearance of a dead body and the women's history of missing men provide enough fuel for Morgan's accusations. Sure enough he creates enough kindling of hatred and judgment to set all of Wales on fire.

The religious intolerance to witches isn't the only supernatural trait in this book and that's where the poetic mysticism comes in. While the forefront of Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones is in the real world, there is a more metaphysical element in the background, one that is firmly entrenched into the Old World of Welsh Mythology and Pagan practices.

There are a lot of descriptions of mist and grayness making the Reader instinctively feel haunted. The characters, particularly Jenner’s, connection to nature calls to mind Wicca priestesses or early witches who meet in the woods and pay reverence to nature in their spells. This is a world that may be approaching modern times but hasn't lost its sense of the ancient world.

What is particularly compelling about the supernatural events in the book is how anticlimactic most of them are and how they can easily be seen with a more scientific explanation at least by the Reader. Jenner’s dog, Smalldog, could be a lovable spirit guide leading her on her solitary journeys but it could just as easily be a friendly stray dog who found a new human friend. There is a mysterious woman, Blodeuwedd, who appears in and out of the book and who could be a friendly but reclusive neighbor, a ghost, or a character from Welsh Mythology helping the mortals who still believe in her and her kind. 

What about those ghosts Lizzie talks to? We read her conversations with them but are they real? Are they proof that Lizzie and the rest of her family have clairvoyant abilities or are they signs of dementia or an emotional desire to live in the past? What are we to make of some of the events prophetic, synchronicity, or coincidence? Even though we are given some theories, ultimately we are left to make our own conclusions.

One of the strongest links with Paganism is that this is a book which is led entirely by women. The fact that this book has a large cast of women of different ages and has significant ties to paganism is not a coincidence. The four Coombe Women reflect the different stages of the Triple Goddess which is a strong belief in modern Pagan movements and was often told in myths and legends as well.

Jenner is the Maiden, innocent, virginal, adventurous, reckless, naive, emotional, immature at times, and always ready to move ahead and forward in life

Together Sarah Maud and Myfanwy form different aspects of the Mother. Sarah Maud parallels the Nymph side, sensual, earthy, existing for physical pleasures, melancholic, self-centered at times, driven by passion, romance, and emotion.

Myfanwy reflects the Mother, warrior, protector, nurturer, something of a martyr complex, temperamental, combative when necessary, and choleric

Last but not least Lizzie is the embodiment of the Crone, wise, experienced, resigned, nostalgic, family leader, filled with sage advice, guide and has seen it all. They embody and are the Goddess.

Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones is a book that is very meditative and lyrical but at the same time relatable and contemporary. It reflects a poetic dream-like world of spirits, magic, and ancient traditions but also faces a reality of addiction, abandonment, grief, and intergenerational conflicts. It doesn't fit nearly into any one particular category or genre so much that it crosses them and opens a veil between reality and fantasy. 

Classics Corner Birthday Book: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan; Emotional Moving Novel About Chinese-American Mothers and Daughters

Classics Corner Birthday Book: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan; Emotional Moving Novel About Chinese-American Mothers and Daughters

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Birthday February 19, 1952

PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book that takes place in a country that starts with "C" (China)




Spoilers: I don't know anything about Mah Jong and I don't have any children, but I do know what it means to be a daughter and to not always understand my mother and vice versa. So I completely understand and sympathize with the plight of the characters in Amy Tan's classic, The Joy Luck Club.




The book is a series of interconnected short stories of four mothers: Suyan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair who emigrated from China and their daughters Jing Mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair who are more American than their mothers. The book is a truly emotional and moving work that while focuses on many of the issues that are faced by Chinese and Chinese-American women, any recent emigre as well as any parent and adult age child can find the conflicts relatable. We have all had situations where we felt that the previous or the next generation doesn't understand us. Then when we look deeper, we learn that we had a lot more in common than we were previously aware.




The four mothers are part of a group that meets weekly to play mah jong and talk about their lives. The book begins after Suyan's death and the other three mothers convince Jing Mei to take her place as the fourth in their mah jong games. Like the game itself, the book is divided into four parts of four stories each making 16 stories total.

The first eight tells of the mothers' and daughters' childhoods. The next eight covers the problems that they receive upon entering adulthood and within their marriages and families.




One of the central themes that carries throughout the book is who the mothers left behind in China. This is particularly strongest in Suyan and Jing Mei's story. After an argument when Jing Mei is still a child, Suyan accidentally blurts out that she had been married previously in China and had fled leaving behind two daughters, neither of which were Jing Mei. Realizing that she has two half-sisters that she never knew changes Jing Mei's relationship with her mother. Jing Mei feels their presence even though they aren't there physically. She feels that her mother preferred the daughters that she missed, so the daughter that is in front of her fails in comparison.

When Jing Mei grows, Suyan pushes her to become successful piano prodigy. After a substandard performance, Jing Mei gives up the piano for good. She spends much of her life believing that her mother doesn't approve of her job, friends, and life. It is not until well into adulthood after Suyan gives her a jade pendent that she learns that she had her mother's approval all along. Late after Suyan's death, the other three Joy Luck mothers contribute money so Jing Mei can travel to China to meet her half-sisters.




Another daughter who feels pressured by her mother into success is Waverly Jong. In fact, Suyan and Lindo turned bragging about their daughters almost into a contact sport. They build up so much competition between the two daughters, that Waverly and Jing Mei become rivals. Lindo's boasts about Waverly are about her genius at chess. Waverly excells at competition to the point that her mother's boasting gets embarrassing. Waverly gets so irritated by her mother talking up her success that she gives up chess. However, she hasn't lost trying to live up to her mother's expectations as a later story testifies when she introduces her white American boyfriend to Lindo. While Lindo seems to be non-committal especially when he commits various embarrassing faux pas at the dinner table, she later tells Waverly that she likes him.

Through Lindo's point of view, we discover that her way with words proved helpful in her past. She has a humorous courtship with her husband in which their respective Cantonese and Mandarin dialects make each other difficult to understand, but Lindo manages to get their conversations steered towards the words "matrimony" and "I do."

More dramatically was an incident in Lindo's youth in which she was forced into marriage with a prepubescent boy and was abused by his cruel mother who kept forcing the young couple to produce grandsons. Lindo manages to find her way out of the situation by pretending that their ancestors are displeased with the marriage and for her husband to accept marriage to a pregnant servant girl instead. Her in-laws get the grandson they coveted, the servant girl moves up a few notches, and Lindo gets free and manages to make her way to America.




While Lindo is a more dominant presence to the point that Waverly considers her mother unbearable, Ying-Ying and Lena St. Clair are more passive and that passivity has shaped their lives in very negative ways. Their stories are among the most heartbreaking. As a child, Ying-Ying got lost from her family during a Moon Lady ceremony. She naively asks the Moon Lady (really a male actor in a costume) to find them. This little scene foreshadows the sadness that Ying-Ying and Lena encounter throughout their lives, often being manipulated and abused by the men in their lives. Ying-Ying survives a torturous first marriage with a womanizer who abandons and results in her aborting her first child. She later marries a white man who is incredibly condescending and mocking towards her. Unfortunately, she also gives birth to an anencephalic child and becomes haunted by his death. She is consumed with depression, nightmares, and hallucinations. This makes her a cypher to Lena.

Lena takes her mother's passivity to heart during her marriage to Harold. Harold is also her supervisor at work and he financially as well as verbally abuses her. Seeing her daughter suffer the same way that she did under the thumb of a dictatorial husband, Ying-Ying convinces Lena to stand up for herself.




The different stories all carry their share of triumph after heartbreak. Among the saddest but ultimately rewarding stories are those of An-Mei and Rose Hsu Jordan. An-Mei's youth was shaped by her mother who became the fourth wife of a wealthy merchant. At first, An-Mei was raised by her grandmother, but after her grandmother's death, she finally moved in with her mother. An-Mei and her mother are abused by the merchant's second wife. The Second Wife plays various manipulative games to assert her dominance in the household such as attempting to win An-Mei over by giving her glass bracelet that she says is really pearl. She yells, screams, threatens suicide to get her way, and keeps An-Mei's half-brother as an emotional hostage by claiming to be his mother. An-Mei's mother finds no escape except through her own suicide. Though, An-Mei is clever enough to warn that her mother's spirit will haunt the cruel Second Wife, silencing the older woman's abuse for good.

An-Mei's family is hit by tragedy again when her youngest son, Bing accidentally drowns during a family trip to the beach. Rose is stricken with guilt for the rest of her life because she was supposed to watch Bing. She is haunted by Bing's death and continues to be held at an emotional distance. That emotional distance continues into her marriage to Ted Jordan. Rose was abused by Ted, a guy who after his bigoted mother insulted Rose put the blame on Rose, asking why she didn't stand up for herself. He also has every intention of getting remarried after his divorce and insults Rose by saying that she will never find anyone else. Rose doesn't want to surrender to her version of the Second Wife, so she challenges him in court for the right to keep their house and commands to be treated with respect.




The Joy Luck Club is filled with beautiful and emotional stories where the mothers and daughters believe that they don't understand each other, but realize that they understand a lot more than they thought. They are similar women with loves and hurts that carried between the generations. As soon as they recognize their similarities, they no longer see themselves under the family terms of mothers and daughters. They see complex women who have been hurt and are trying to find ways to move beyond that hurt. They recognize themselves into their journies that the mothers started and the daughters completed.

The Joy Luck Club is a book that has a lot of tears, a lot of heart, and ultimately a lot of joy.

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. 1) by Philippa Gregory; A Good Beginning To Series About Powerful Royal Women, But Marred By A Not-So-Memorable Lead

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. 1) by Philippa Gregory; A Good Beginning To Series About Powerful Royal Women, But Marred By A Not-So-Memorable Lead




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Besides the Thursday Next Series, another favorite book series that I am going to tackle is Philippa Gregory's The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series. This series focuses on the scandals, power plays, and political intrigue that was found in the English Royalty from the reign of King Henry VI to Queen Elizabeth I. The series involves several key players, mostly female, as they recount this colorful history.

The books were not written in chronological order and not originally one whole series but two: The Cousin's War which focused on the War of the Roses and the reign of Richard III and the Tudor Court Series which dealt with the reigns of Henry VIII and his daughters, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. The first book written in the former series was The White Queen while the latter was The Other Boleyn Girl. It was only after books like Three Sisters, Three Queens and The King's Curse tied into events from the two series, that Gregory combined the two as one. It is the preferred chronological order that I am using for these reviews creating one steady timeline from one book to the next.


It is important that this distinction is made to reveal some of the issues that are found in the first book in the series, Lady of the Rivers. This is the first set but the ninth book written and it somewhat shows in Gregory's writing.

Lady of the Rivers focuses on Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville who became the wife of King Edward IV and turned heads because of her commoner status. The White Queen was brilliant in how Gregory wrote Elizabeth as a strong confident character who while flawed was active and powerful in her own right. Lady of the Rivers however differs in that it gives us a lead in Jacquetta who has some interesting moments but is a dull lead. She often just reports on others doings becoming unimportant and underdeveloped in her own story.




Jacquetta begins the novel as the daughter of a noble family who is a descendant of Melusine, a magical half-woman and half-sea creature from Breton legend. (In history, Jacquetta was related to the Duke of Burgundy whose family legends believed that they were descended from Melusine.) Trained by her great-aunt, Jehanne, Jacquetta exhibits supernatural abilities such as spell casting and precognition. In some creepy moments, she hears Melusine sing when family members die.




These abilities carry Jacquetta far especially when she marries John, Duke of Bedford uncle of King Henry VI and regent of France. In fact it is her abilities that interest John more than her body or personality. He is possibly asexual, and wants to live a sexless marriage with Jacquetta so she can use her abilities to his benefit. He is an alchemist and he wants her precognitive abilities to discern how things are going to go. One memorable chapter features her seeing a vision of a queen riding a horse with shoes on backwards. The implications of this vision isn't revealed until the end of the book.




Jacquetta uses her abilities in secret to be a figure behind the scenes of the action. Unfortunately, that's how she remains through most of the book. Jacquetta only comes into her own in these moments when she uses her abilities and when after John's death, she marries his squire, Richard Woodville and surrenders her wealth and title for love. She shows glimpses of being an interesting and memorable protagonist. Unfortunately, the glimpses are all that is shown.




Her precognitive abilities are used sparingly and her love story with Richard Woodville is resolved by the middle of the book. Instead of being an active participant, she remains happily married to Richard, a mother to a large family, and friend and lady in waiting to other more interesting characters.




One issue is that in the narrative Jacquetta serves as friend and companion to characters that are far more fascinating and colorful than she is. In the early chapters, her uncle hosts a unique prisoner whom Jacquetta bonds with: Jeanne La Pucelle also known as Joan of Arc. Jacquetta is fascinated by Joan's spirituality, her courage in leading men in battle, and her determination in the face of death. She is heartbroken after Joan's execution having lost a close friend.




It is understandable that Gregory would choose not to tell the novel from Joan's perspective. After all, Joan of Arc’s story has been done to death. However, there is another character that Gregory could have chosen instead, one who not only chews every moment she's in but devours them: Margaret d’Anjou, the wife of Henry VI and the matriarch of the Lancaster family during the War of the Roses.




When Jacquetta first meets her, Margaret is a shy nervous girl uncertain about her matrimonial duties. After Henry suffers a stroke and is reduced to a childlike state, Margaret emerges as the true power behind the throne. No decision is made without her approval. She rewards and demotes noblemen in her favor. When she is desperate to have an heir, she foregoes her infirm husband and has an affair with the Duke of Somerset to conceive her son, Edward. Her at times reckless actions causes the War of the Roses as Richard, Duke of York questions her decisions and ultimately challenges Margaret and her followers for the throne. Margaret is passionate, strong-willed, self-centered, and more competent than the men around her.




How awesome would it be for Margaret to tell her own story? We would understand perhaps her mixed feelings towards her ailing husband and her growing affection for Somerset whom she could see as more than an ally. We would see the power struggles that she has with male noblemen when she is often the only woman in the room. We could also understand her anger more when the Duke of York turns against her and her anxiety when, upon York's death, she and others see three suns in the sky (a real-life astronomical phenomena at the time. Some thought it was a comet passing over during the day) and interprets it to be a sign of the three sons of York: Edward, George, and Richard. (Two of which become kings as well.)

We had the Cousin's War told from the Yorkist side in the series and while we get the Lancaster side with Margaret Beaufort, Margaret d'Anjou’s narrative would also help give both sides of the conflict equal air time.

Plus in most accounts of the War of the Roses, Margaret d'Anjou often emerges as the villain of the peace. Like Richard III in books such as Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, allowing Margaret d'Anjou to narrate her own story would make her more complex and give her the chance to explain herself in a way that history doesn't allow.




Unfortunately, Gregory uses Jacquetta of Luxembourg instead and this narrative pales in comparison to Gregory's previous works. Even after Jacquetta’s husband and brothers swear fealty to York, Jacquetta concentrates on providing advantageous marriages to her children particularly her daughter, Elizabeth whom she sees as bound for great things. Jacquetta is reduced to being a mouthpiece for other people's actions and not her own.




Perhaps in her ninth book, Gregory had writer's fatigue which is understandable. In a long series of loosely connected books, not every volume is going to be a winner. However, compared to other characters that Gregory wrote about such as Elizabeth Woodville, Anne and Mary Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, Margaret Beaufort, even a fictional lead like the Queen's Fool’s Hannah Greene, Jacquetta just seems boring and colorless.
While Lady of the Rivers does a good job of setting the stage for things to come, Readers could just as easily jump to the White Queen and not miss much. They would also find a more compelling narrator in the daughter over the mother.