February Reading

I can't believe that February had ended!  Although, I am not a winter girl, so there is no complaining here!  As a matter of fact, we spent 2 weeks at the beach in February, so that helped alot!  You would think that I would have gotten plenty of reading done, sitting by the pool, but, alas, I was just too busy! I am reading a long book right now, so it won't be included here until March.  So...my reading for February..

1) The Archivist by Martha Cooley.  This is a book that I have picked up several times to look at, but never went ahead and got it to read.  It came up on a list of books recently, so I decided to read it. I ended up liking it quite a bit.  It is the author's first novel and she will definitely be one that I will follow.

The premise of the story is that letters written by T.S.Eliot to his friend (lover?) Emily Hale had been sent to a prestigious university and had been archived. Eliot's wife had been institutionalized and he had carried on a friendship and correspondence with Emily for years.

The two main characters of the book (or are they?) are Matthias Lane, a 65 year old archivist and Roberta Spire, a graduate student.  Roberta wants a look at the archived letters related to reasons that she had just learned that her parents had been Jews who escaped the Holocaust and converted to Christianity.  Because Eliot had converted to Catholicism, she was hoping to learn how her parents may have come to their conversion decision. She was not aware that the Holocaust played a role in Matt's wife's breakdown. Matt had also had to commit his wife to an asylum.

So there are many elements going on in the story, with lots of different comparisons and/or similarities.  Like Eliot, Matt was a rather isolated person, who tended to remain detached from others. His blossoming friendship with Roberta lead him to begin to realize his part in how his life had played out, in terms of his own decisions.

2) Alibi by Joseph Kanon. Alibi is a mystery that takes place in Venice post WWII. Adam Miller had just left the US Army where he had worked in Germany as an intelligence officer investigating war-crimes.  His mother, Grace, had just moved to Venice and had taken a house on the Grand Canal where Adam came to join her. Grace had become involved with a doctor, Gianni, whom she had known years earlier before marrying Adam's deceased father.  Grace took Adam to a party where he meet Claudia.  They quickly became involved and as Adam got to know her, he learned that she was an Italian Jew who had been placed in a camp during the war.  As Adam spent time with Gianni, he began to be suspicious of what Gianni had done during the war.  As he began to look into Gianni's past, things quickly escalated.  The story was a good one, but it seemed like the relationships that were developed  early in the story fell somewhat flat. I was glad to be done once I finished the book.  It had begun to drag for me.

3) The Last Midwife by Sandra Dallas.  This was a book chosen for one of my book groups.  I had read it some years ago, so it was the second time for me.  It was a good, interesting story, but the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying. It made
our group wonder why she spent so much time writing the book and then ended it the way she did.

The story took place in 1880 in a small mining town in Colorado.  Gracy Brookens was the town's only midwife and she had been accused of murdering a baby after she delivered it.  Gracy had delivered babies all her life, since she was around 10 years old.  She loved babies and working with the mothers. Of course, Gracy had not committed the murder, but clearing her name wasn't so easy. And Gracy was not too forthcoming in her defense. Gracy knew many, many secrets from all of her years delivering babies and she had a strict code...she would tell no one the secrets that she knew. And that included secrets about the baby (and the baby's family) she was accused of murdering.

Oh, did my review end abruptly?  So did the ending of the book.