Lincoln O'Neill's job at Omaha's Courier newspaper is in security, but he doesn't play the standard role of blocking viruses and thwarting hackers. Lincoln reads emails. More specifically, he monitors a program that flags every uncensored email an employee sends. Everyone at The Courier knows someone is monitoring their email, but no one has seen him, and Lincoln's long night hours make him nearly invisible at the office. Jennifer and Beth are two employees who break the censorship rule -- often. In rebellious defiance of company policy the two women send endless emails to each other during their work hours, hilarious and honest emails discussing their personal lives as they help each other through different struggles. Jennifer isn't ready to start a family, but her husband couldn't be more excited at the prospect of having a baby. Beth's relationship with her college boyfriend, metal guitarist Chris, is on a perpetually rocky road, and with her younger sister getting married ahead of her Beth is more than willing to exercise her sharp tongue in her daily emails to Jennifer. Lincoln knows he shouldn't be reading their emails, knows he should send them a warning and move on; but the prospect of no longer getting Beth and Jennifer's funny and charming emails every day is something he doesn't want to face. Soon not getting involved will get him in over his head - especially when he starts falling for Beth.

Attachments, Rainbow Rowell's 2011 debut, is one of those novels that defy classification or comparison because it’s just so wonderfully original. Her characters instantly become charming and familiar friends, which is in itself impressive for a debut, but perhaps most remarkable is the way, in Jennifer and Beth’s case, Rowell constructs such heartwarming characters entirely from email correspondence. For a large portion of the story Rowell leaves narrative behind to convey the personalities of her two female characters only through their emails to each other, leaving the reader to get to know them in the exact same way Lincoln does. There’s a lot to give up in writing like this and it could be a gamble; the reader doesn’t get to see how the characters physically behave, what their movements say about them; body language and the emotiveness of physicality are gone. But somehow the fullness of the characters is still rendered, and rendered very well; it was simultaneously surprising and refreshing to see female characters presented in such vividness without the need to build their appearance into the story. In fact, Jennifer and Beth almost come more to life through their emails to each other than even the charismatic Lincoln, who becomes the only main character that Rowell’s interweaving narrative follows. This struck me as an inspired reimagining of the typical structure of a novel and especially a great example of creative character development.

Another great uniqueness in Attachments is the way Rowell manages to turn the traditional romantic-comedy tables on the sexes: Lincoln as the protagonist is the one to fall in love and pine for the unreachable, seemingly perfect girl. But there’s also a lot more to the story, which keeps it one step ahead of the reader in getting caught on any clichés. When some heavy topics graze the edges of the story Rowell keeps her effervescent narrative light and airy, yet full of so much quirky substance that the reader isn’t likely to feel lulled into the sort of over-familiarity that can lead to boredom or disinterest. Instead, it seems like every chapter is a new reminder to us that we’re reading something quite unlike anything we’ve read before; and that’s both a delight and a pleasure.

- - - - -

Attachments was my February pick for the 2014 TBR Pile reading challenge; this has been on my to-be-read list since it was first published. I was living in Omaha at the time and picked up a copy at one of the local Barnes & Nobles out of curiosity (amusingly enough, they had signed copies on display so I inadvertently have a signed first addition - go figure!). Reading it now was such a fun reminder of what I loved about that city, especially how nice the people are. The characters even made a few stops to familiar settings, which was a fun bit of extra nostalgia.

Title:AttachmentsAuthor: Rainbow Rowell Genre: contemporary fiction, romance Publisher: Dutton Books Release date: April 14, 2011 Source: Personal collection Buy the book:Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | IndieBoundConnect with the author:Website/Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

“What moves us is not just that characters, images, and events get some form of recapitulations or recall: We are moved by the increasing connectedness of things, ultimately a connectedness of values.”

John Gardner was perhaps as well known (if not more so) for his instruction on writing as for his own fictional works, and his Art of Fiction: Notes on the Craft for Young Writers compiles the fullness of his teachings on what makes a great writer great. There is, on the whole, a lot to take away from Gardner’s book, but there’s also a lot to work through. The attitude of Gardner’s narrative often tends toward the stereotypical elitism of the highly-educated “serious writer” (to use his term, at other times referred to as a “true writer”), and as a result readers might be at risk of missing some of Gardner’s most crucial lessons under the weight of all his posturing. His musings on the significance of a writer’s formal education to his skill range from referencing the self-educated man as an “imbecile” (intended with its original meaning, though made no less harsh by the continuation of his thought that such a man may write a great novel if he’s lucky) to somewhat backhanded compliments like, “The best writers do not always (or even often) come from the well-educated upper middle class – art’s cauldron is only on rare occasions gold or silver.” (Another aside: though at times his narrative may strike some readers as sexist, he does admit – in one line which I forgot to note verbatim – that many of the greatest novels were penned by women. Huzzah!)

Still, though some of his opinions may be dated, his advice certainly isn’t. Here Gardner digs profoundly deep into the foundation of writing; for obvious reasons his discussion focuses predominantly on the science of the art, but he does at times give leave to its inevitable changeability (as he says, “no laws are absolute in fiction”). The translation of Gardner’s generational perceptions can be perhaps a little rocky (there are no romance writers here, only “pornographers”), but the bones of his advice can be aptly applied to any genre, any generation, and certainly any style. Whether or not the bones are worth digging for is obviously each unique writer’s opinion.

Here are some of my favorite takeaways from The Art of Fiction:

On narrative...

“Vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as ‘she noticed’ be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen.”

The writer...

“It is the novelist’s reward for thinking carefully about reality, brooding on every image, every action, every word, both those things he planned from the beginning and those that crept in in the service of convincingness.”

On style...

“About style, the less said the better. Nothing leads to fraudulence more swiftly than the conscious pursuit of stylistic uniqueness. But on the other hand nothing is more natural to the young and ambitious writer than that he try to find a voice and territory of his own, proving himself different from all other writers.”

The long and short of it...

“The most useful hint is perhaps this: Read the story over and over, at least a hundred times – literally – watching for subtle meanings, connections, accidental repetitions, psychological significance. Leave nothing – no slightest detail – unexamined, and when you discover implications in some image or event, oonch those implications toward the surface. [...] As for the warnings, two are of most importance: On one hand, don’t overdo the denouement, so ferociously pushing meaning that the reader is distracted from the fictional dream, giving the narrative a too conscious, contrived, or 'workshop' effect; and don’t on the other hand, write so subtly or timidly – from fear of sentimentality or obviousness – that no one, not even the angels aflutter in the rafters, can hear the resonance.”

There are a lot of interesting points in Gardner’s book, particularly following along with him as he crafts a story idea and explores the right and (potentially) wrong moves, how the story would change with different intents, and the myriad ways it could be done well. He also provides exercises at the back of the book – both group exercises intended for classes and writings groups, and individual exercises for the endeavoring writer to tackle alone. (I’ll possibly write about those in the future since I haven’t pursued them yet.) On the whole, for writers looking to better their craft through strongly academic, objective study, The Art of Fiction offers a very thorough perspective.

In her new novel, I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira takes the reader to Paris in the Belle Époque and tells the story of the tumultuous relationships between the radical impressionists, centering on Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas. She’s a sensible American with an untapped talent; he’s the master she’s always admired, whose work is more than paint. When Degas, uncharacteristically bewitched, begs an introduction, their lives are catapulted into a swell of emotional upheaval, of joy and loss and the bewildering elusiveness of love. With his genius Degas will guide her to her own profound talent, helping her to see beyond the meager veil of commercialism to redefine her experience of art; but with his maddening unpredictability, his impossible conceit, and his infuriating severity, Mary may find herself at the brink of breaking, whether by spirit or heart. Central in the lives of Mary and Degas are the host of independently-minded artists who brought the impressionist movement to life: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, and Camille Pissaro. Also among their set are Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, whose incorrigible love, barely muted by Berthe’s marriage to Édouard’s brother, mirrors the overwhelming and ultimately tragic trajectory of Mary and Degas’s relationship. Oliveira’s rendering of Paris in the late 1800s is a gorgeous, bittersweet love letter to an iconic and wildly romantic time in history, but nothing of I Always Loved You rings of a fairy tale. Instead, the author pursues the sadness and tumult of her characters’ relationships, unearthing the ugliness of love and the miserable beauty of what can be lost. For all this heaviness, though, Oliveira has brought to readers a surprisingly life-affirming novel, one that will test our allegiance to our way of thinking and open our minds, as her Degas would, to a different perspective. To a degree, one knows early on that this story won’t end with “Happily Ever After”, but in many ways I felt that Oliveira redefined the construct of a romantic story and greatly splintered the confines of a novel of relationships. The result of her efforts was, I thought, a collective masterpiece of engaging prose, larger-than-life characters, and profound emotional insight. And, of course, there was just so much breathtaking art. Oliveira has a special talent, I think, for describing art and the artistic process. One of the things I love about this slightly newer wave of biographical fiction, as it were, is how the historical element works so greatly in favor of the fictional element, literally bringing the world of the novel into the world of the reader. There was an extra excitement in recognizing some of the pieces as Degas, Cassatt and company were creating them, and additionally Oliveira has dedicated a page of her website to providing links to all of the works featured in the book.

The impressionist movement was my first artistic love at a very young age, and it was something more than charming to see these giants of the style, so long hidden to the viewer behind their paintings, come to life under Oliveira’s guidance. Being a work of historical fiction it’s of course important to remember that these likenesses are presented through the media of creative storytelling, a means of capturing the ups and downs of the emotional story, and in that endeavor not necessarily interested in achieving anything on the biographical end. Still, I fell in love with the world of Oliveira’s novel and I was beguiled by this collection of artists, each character a vibrant definition of the individual and unpredictable essence of the creative soul. Who is likable and who isn’t, who is a hero and who is a villain, none of those stringent margins are adhered to, and that’s one of the novel’s greatest charms. I felt every ounce of the characters’ joys and frustrations: Mary’s fury with Degas when he was impossible and her love for him when he was at his best; Berthe’s impossible fight between her duty to disengage herself from Manet’s love and her fervent desire to cling to it; Degas’s hopeless desperation to achieve perfection with his Little Dancer; Manet’s struggle between a broken heart and a body broken by disease, guarded only by the veneer of his own reputation. For me as a reader, all of this in a novel would’ve been enough; but there’s more to be had, more emotional ground which Oliveira intimately explores. Mary’s relationship with her family is a central and compelling point of the story, most especially her love for her perpetually ill sister, Lydia. The social extremes in the lives of artists are also on display when the creative minds behind neighboring and distant mediums collide amid the parties and cafes of Paris; Émile Zola is brought to life in the pages, as are numerous other luminaries of the age. Their squabbles and disagreements are as fascinating to watch unfold as the creative processes of their art, which says a great deal: observing the torturous ministrations of the artists in their craft make for some of the novels most arresting scenes, whether Mary is toiling over an unfinished canvas or Degas is obsessively lost to the realization of his dancer statue. It’s a testament to the talent of the artist of one medium – the writer – that she can so deeply draw us into the experience of another. With its finely researched detail and beautiful scope, I Always Loved You has the potential to be one of those rarely emotional experiences that readers won’t soon forget.

Title:I Always Loved YouAuthor: Robin Oliveira Genre: historical fiction Publisher: Viking Adult Available Formats: hardcover, ebook Release date: February 4, 2014 Source: Penguin (c/o) Buy the book:Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & NobleConnect with the author:Website

Although her name is universally synonymous with her groundbreaking roles as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Vivien Leigh's legacy as an actress radiates across a career that spanned three decades and singularly impacted the worlds of both stage and screen. From her industry-changing portrayal of one of the most iconic film characters of all time to her twenty-year relationship with Laurence Olivier, Vivien has always been a woman somehow trapped beneath stigmas, rumors, and ever-changing accounts. She battled manic depression in a time when the disorder was far from understood; she carried the weight of the world’s opinions over her love affair with the world’s greatest actor; and through it all, she remained deeply personal, selective in her career, and enigmatic in her public image. In Kendra Bean’s new biography, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait, the details of Vivien’s life combine with rare and previously unpublished photos to present in full the true nature of Vivien Leigh, celebrating the legend while simultaneously liberating the woman from the shadows of her own success.

The publication of Bean’s Intimate Portrait coincides with Vivien’s centennial, an undoubtedly nerve-wracking endeavor for a first-time author. But by utilizing her academic skillset, drawing on the past six years spent single-handedly running the popular Oliviers website VivAndLarry.com, and by foraging into the Laurence Olivier Archives for the first time in a Vivien Leigh biography Bean has created a portrait of the legendary actress that is well deserving of such a momentous celebration. The resulting biography epitomizes Vivien Leigh and handles her legacy with the same characteristics that continue to define the actress: with beauty, grace, and elegance. Bean’s applicable narrative creates a reliable foundation for Vivien’s story, one that engages the reader and delivers rich details for fans while taking care never to overwhelm new admirers with the its expanse of information. Thus the stage is set, and an impressive collection of photos deliver extraordinary visual appeal, among them a vast selection from Vivien’s “personal” photographer, Angus McBean, as well as a plethora of candid shots that tell of Vivien’s life on the set, on the stage, and in private. All rendered in a strikingly designed, coffee table-style tome, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait makes for a sumptuous commemoration of its subject.

Also beautifully captured is Vivien’s love affair and subsequent marriage to Laurence Olivier. In handling what is arguably one of the most celebrated and controversial relationships of the twentieth century, Bean exercises a keen respectfulness. When sifted through the couple’s personal letters and the insights from those closest to them, Vivien and Olivier’s deeply-felt and ultimately complex love shines through as the defining pillar of their relationship. Olivier himself is fully detailed in this biography, his character entwined with Vivien’s at the height of their success in both career and life; but despite Vivien’s own lifelong praise of him as the ultimate man and actor, it’s she who remains the luminary of every page. While I loved every facet of An Intimate Portrait, I think my favorite moments were when Bean documented Vivien and Olivier's work on the stage; for film-goers with less knowledge of the couples’ theatrical work, this in-depth exploration offers an especially exciting foray into their life together. Vivien’s battle with bi-polar disorder is also touched on with respectful repetition, eloquently (and perhaps vitally) sketching the effects the mental illness had on her life, career, and relationships through many years. Bean examines with great insight how Vivien’s personal struggles mirrored the struggles of her characters, and how this illustrates for us the depth of Vivien’s passion as an actress.

More than an organized compilation of facts, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait takes its reader wholly into the past and showcases Vivien’s life in an explosion of colorful detail. There’s a quality to the book that could be described as atmospheric, raising the bar not only for how illustrated biographies are presented, but also for how they make us feel. In the case of An Intimate Portrait, a gorgeous and thoughtfully-rendered letter of admiration and affection, the reader can expect to find themselves fully immersed in Vivien’s stratosphere, a passenger in the life of a tremendous woman who left an unprecedented mark on theater, cinema, and the world at large.

---

Get the book: Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble
Connect with the author: Website | Facebook | Twitter | VivAndLarry.com/Facebook

As a spiritual entrepreneur and life coach, Gabrielle Bernstein has been called a new-age thought leader and a guru for a new generation. Her third book, May Cause Miracles, is a guidebook that adapts the principles of A Course in Miracles, serving as a tool for faith-seekers on their journey to peace and enlightenment. One of the things I loved right off the bat is that May Cause Miracles manages to liberate spirituality from the politics of religion. It operates on the basis that there’s no right or wrong way to have faith. Let’s say it’s very BYOF –Bring Your Own Faith. Regardless of your spiritual practice – or even if you don’t have one – the tools in May Cause Miracles offer an effective way to look at our real-life problems and find ways of changing our perspective that feel genuinely natural.

Throughout the book’s 42-day practice, Bernstein invites her readers to utilize meditation, journaling, prayer, and affirmations as they approach key struggles in life: relationships, self-worth, body image, and financial fears among them. Six days of each week involve a three-point practice - a morning reflection, a daily affirmation, and an evening reflection - while Sunday becomes a day of reviewing the week behind and planning for the week ahead. The morning reflections most often include a prayer or meditation while the evening reflections encourage readers to witness the fears that came up in their day and acknowledge them through letter-writing, list-making, or Bernstein’s unique practice of ~ing writing, the act of journaling with abandon from the heart rather than the mind. These tools all work to exercise Bernstein’s key steps to blasting through fear: witnessing, acknowledging, and forgiving. She encourages readers to bring the work they do through the book to their Inner Guide, or ~ing, as she calls it. In this practice, one’s Inner Guide can take any form: it can be God, it can be Buddha; it can simply be love itself. Her basis gives the impression that the foundation of faith is simply the act of believing in a greater good. This approach, combined with her thoughtful and dependable tone throughout the book, makes May Cause Miracles a rich and insightful journey for a decidedly vast audience.

As with any book on spirituality, I think the ideal reader is someone who is simply open to receiving what the author has to offer. I went into May Cause Miracles with the desire to open myself up to more positivity and I came out of it with a whole new skill set to better equip me as I attempt to live life with a little more balance, grace, and peace. I had never been particularly effective at writing longhand, but the practices in May Cause Miracles not only helped me develop a passion for journaling, they also helped me learn to examine my own thoughts better without the therapeutic tap of a keyboard. Some of the practices weren’t easy – here Bernstein encourages us to forgive a lot of what we find most unforgivable about ourselves – but I think one of my favorite things about the book is that it offers opportunities to grow in all the areas of our lives. Over the course of my journey with May Cause Miracles I learned to know myself better, to strengthen my self-worth, and to simply accept some of my shortcomings. In a voice full of compassion and wisdom, Gabrielle Bernstein presents May Cause Miracles in a way that trades the banalities of self-help for progressive self-actualization, and the result is a game-changer.

Title:May Cause MiraclesAuthor: Gabrielle Bernstein Genre: spirituality, self-help Publisher: Harmony Available Formats: hardcover, e-book Release date: January 1, 2013 Source: Personal Collection Buy the book:Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & NobleConnect with the author:Website/Vlog | Facebook | Twitter

Florence in 1943 is radiating calm before a storm, entirely at the disposal of its German allies whose soldiers spill across the Tuscan hillside with abandon, commandeering art and artifacts as they go. Gradually receiving the brunt of the Nazis' focus are the Rosatis, a family of Italian nobility, and their idyllic estate, Villa Chimera. Here lives eighteen year-old Cristina Rosati, who exists in an otherwise blissful ignorance away from the tragedies of the war until she embarks on a love affair with a young Nazi officer that will ultimately lead her family on a treacherous downward spiral. Branded as traitors for hosting the Nazis, the Rosati family is left to witness their own fall from grace - if they manage to survive the war. Ten years later, police detective Serafina Bettini is investigating the gruesome serial murders of the remaining members of the Rosati family. She’s desperate to solve the mystery before the killer reaches the youngest of the Rosatis: Cristina. As Serafina's investigation leads her further into the scandal of Villa Chimera and its wartime downfall, she realizes that she herself may have ties to the victims, and maybe even to the killer.

Chris Bohjalian's strengths as a writer have consistently captured my attention as I've journeyed through three of his books this year. His latest novel, The Light in the Ruins, carries all the hallmarks I've come to know of Bohjalian's artistry with fiction. As with The Sandcastle Girls, the richly imagined and beautifully researched history brings the era of the story to life in a way that takes historical fiction to an exciting new level. The characters, all portrayed with an intensity and depth that I've come to expect from the author, captured me from the beginning. Despite being a story full of people, one character never blurs with another; they each manage to take on a larger-than-life presence throughout the novel. Cristina's determined spirit in her youth and Serafina's ability to survive a horrific personal tragedy were inspiring; even the disturbing Nazi antagonist Colonel Decher and the villainous murderer at the heart of the story’s mystery compelled my attention at every scene. The Light in the Ruins is also very dedicated to its genre as a murder mystery; an entirely gruesome whodunit that never once feels contrived. The uniqueness that sets it apart, I think, is rooted in the experienced literary talent of the author, and his ability to truly outwit his audience. The novel's narrative alternates from Cristina's love affair with a Nazi in 1944 to the Rosati murders and Serafina's investigation in 1955, with brief and successfully unsettling first-person interruptions from the faceless serial killer posed between chapters. Through the dual story lines Bohjalian finds a way of simultaneously telling his story from front to back and back to front, a device used similarly in The Sandcastle Girls and which I greatly enjoyed. I found myself on several occasions unseating myself as a reader in order to view the story from the perspective of a writer, to examine and appreciate the deftness and intricacy of its construction, something I've had a tendency to do with all of Bohjalian’s work. And yet I’m never distracted from the story. Everything seems to happen all at once, and so far it’s been vastly enjoyable every time.

At the core of the novel, The Light in the Ruins is powerful on many levels. Stepping out of the territory of the plot – the murder mystery – it broadens to touch on the subject of morality and love in, around, and well outside of the war’s reach. At times a gentle homage to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it captures the passion of youth; but it also examines the beauty of love’s strength in all its manifestation: between husbands and wives, parents and children, friends, partners, and beyond. I saw only the tense literary thriller coming; the emotional complexity left me breathless and a great deal less dry-eyed than I usually am at the final pages of a novel. Graceful and evocative, The Light in the Ruins delivers a romance, murder mystery, and a profound narrative on human nature in one beautifully crafted story.

Buy the book: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble

Connect with the author: Website | Facebook | Twitter