Not That Kind of Ever After: a disappointing modern take on classic fairytales

 Not That Kind of Ever After by Luci Adams is one woman’s journey to claim her own happily ever after in the age of dating apps and the quest to find your soulmate. Life for Bella Marble is not what she imagined. Instead of being a published author, she is a receptionist. Instead of being happily married, she is single and her best friend, Ellie Mathews, is moving out and getting married! Feeling adrift, she spends some time with Marty, Ellie’s aggravating but oh-so-hot brother. When Marty challenges Bella to stop looking for “the one” and just have fun, she finds a new side of herself. After posting about a disastrous one night stand in a fairy tale style, she has gone viral. Now the pressure is mounting to write more of these fairy tales, but can she write one without living one? Can her soulmate already be before her eyes?

Even though this story is described as “Fairytale meets feminism,” I was intrigued by the premises of modern day fairy tales. However, this story was a disappointment from the opening line. The story is broken up into seven parts with a total of 100 chapters! Groan! Granted the chapters are quick but they're almost too quick. Once you get into the chapter, it’s over. Then there’s Bella. How can we cheer and root for a character who introduces herself with this opening “It came, unlike me, while I was riding backward cowgirl on what must have been the hairiest man in London.” Ummm, what?!? The story doesn’t get better from there. Bella is completely unlikeable. She is judgmental and has an inflated ego. She wants to be the next Bridget Jones. Another groan from me.  Overall, I did not enjoy this book. I would not recommend Not That Kind of Ever After. 

Not That Kind of Ever After is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook

Song of a Captive Bird: based on the life of Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhad

Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Dapzink is a story inspired by the life and poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad. Born in 1935 to her father, a man she only knew as the Colonel and his wife, Turan, Forugh was a child who found pleasure in breaking the rules and even greater pleasure in the storytelling afterward. In the summer of 1950, she met her cousin and future husband, Parviz Shapour. He was a satirist who encouraged her to write poetry. They were married in 1951 when she was 16 and her only son would be born two years later. However, she felt trapped by the bonds of marriage and motherhood, she began to travel to Tehran seeking to publish her poetry. Once her poems were published and gained attention, she finds her life at a crossroad. Parviz grants her a divorce and she loses custody of her son, she tries to rebuild her life and gain her voice as a feminist and a poet at a time when Iran was in turmoil.

Song of a Captive Bird is an interesting story of a woman ahead of her time. I wasn’t familiar with her or her poetry but as a lover of poetry I was intrigued. Her life was filled with horrors and heartache. First at the mercy of her father, then her husband (who didn’t treat who horribly but expected her to conform), and then at society who wasn’t prepared for her voice. Ms. Dapzink describes Forugh’s life with such details that I cringed and cried at her pain and at her frustration. Sadly, Forugh was killed in a car accident on February 14, 1967. Her poems would be banned and censored by the government but her poems still found their way into the hands of the people and have been read for decades after her death. I enjoyed how Ms. Dapzink used Forugh’s poems throughout the story so the reader can understand the situation which inspired her work. I highly recommend Song of a Captive Bird.

Song of a Captive Bird

will be available on February 13, 2018

In hardcover and eBook

“Why should I stop, why? 
the birds have gone in search 
of the blue direction. 
the horizon is vertical, vertical 
and movement fountain-like; 
and at the limits of vision 
shining planets spin. 
the earth in elevation reaches repetition, 
and air wells 
changes into tunnels of connection; 
and day is a vastness, 
which does not fit into narrow mind 
of newspaper worms.”

-verse taken from “It is Only Sound that Remains”

Unless by Carol Shields: a review

“Unless” by Carol Shields is the story of a woman, Reta, who faces a crisis when her oldest daughter, Norah, who decides to drop out of college and panhandle on the street corner in Toronto. Norah says nothing and only has a sign which reads GOODNESS. This book would be Ms. Shields’ last book as she passed away on July 16, 2003 after a battle with breast cancer at the age of 68.
The story opens in the summer of 2000. Reta, a writer in her mid-forties, lists her writing accomplishments and the life events that occurred alongside them. The birth of her children and her friendship and working relationship with fellow writer Danielle Westerman. Her husband, Tom, is a doctor. It was confusing as to what type of doctor Tom is. She writes in one chapter: “Tom, who is a family physician and has a broad scientific background” and throughout the rest of the book, Tom is researching trilobites, a fossil group of extinct marine arthropods. Why would a family physician be studying trilobites? Is this a hobby? Ms. Shields doesn’t make this clear. The main story is Reta’s mission to figure out why her daughter, Norah, would drop out of college and panhandle on the street. Her mission as well as her writing a second novel. Reta begins to realize that women authors aren’t named among the great minds and resents her editor when he suggests that men protagonists make for better sellers.
“Unless” was a very difficult book to read. First, Reta is very unsympathic. As I read, I couldn’t help but realize that I didn’t care about her, her writing or her mission to have women author be counted among the greats. Ms. Shields’ assumption that women seen as good to write “domestic” subjects such as romance novels and that women writers have to have a male protagonist. When she is clearly ignoring many women authors who write female protagonists outside the domestic scene. For example, Patricia Cornwell and her Dr Kay Scarpetta. Second, Ms. Shields likes to use big and obscure words with little clue as to their meaning. I have a fairly good vocabulary and if I don’t know the words I’m usually good at figuring them out by the sentences around them or I look the word up just to clarify my understand. However, in this book, there were 4 words that were so obscure that the sentences around them did not help in their understanding. For example, lachrymose was used in this sentence, “’She is such a lachrymose woman.’ I once heard a man say that disdainfully about his sister; he might have been talking about me in my present state.” For those who don’t know, lachrymose means to cause tears or cry often. What about that sentence helps the reader understand the meaning if he or she doesn’t already know? Third, Reta’s “feminist” mission irritated me. It was a constant borage of “what about women?” The character’s letters to various authors and even one man’s obituary about their omission of women authors was overdone. Reading it, I was thinking “Ok, I get it. Women don’t get the same acknowledge as men.”
The letter to the man who just died was a little creepy and just wrong. The only aspect of this book that I did like was the reason behind Norah’s crisis. The author does give a little foreshadowing but if the reader isn’t reading closely, he or she will miss it. Unfortunately, the rest of the book, the characters are so bland that I kept looking and saying “how many more pages?” and when I do that I know it’s not a good book.
Before writing my review, I wanted to get the impression of other readers, in case I was missing something about the book. I went to goodreads.com and while those who liked the book were already fans of Ms. Shields, many of the reviewers had the same problems I did. One reviewer wrote “I didn’t like the idea that flowed thru this book that women are oppressed and of no significance to men.” Another wrote, “self-congratulatory and trite.” Lastly, a reviewer wrote, “The character was too self-absorbed.”
“Unless” was a boring book about a woman struggling with her life, her writing and places the blame on the men who do not acknowledge the accomplishments of women.