Ah, the beauty of the West, of a herd of wild horses, of a campfire crackling at night, of a group of young Chinese women being driven to a fate worse than death in a rough hewn mining camp – wait, back up, strike that. Let’s start again. Last fall I reviewed another movie, “Thousand Pieces of Gold,” set in the old west featuring a young Chinese woman who is sold across the Pacific to be a prostitute but who manages to escape and build a better life for herself. At the time, I mentioned that movie reminded me of aspects of this one and now I’ve finally had the time to watch it again and review it.

It’s 1898 and Print Ritter (Robert Duvall) is riding up to a cow camp in Oregon where his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church) is working. Print brings Tom a letter from his (Tom’s) dead mother and the news that she left Print, her brother, her estate. Print then proposes a plan to square things with Tom. The two of them will round up a herd of wild horses and drive them 800 miles to Wyoming to sell to the government then divide the profits. Seeing a way out of a future becoming a broken down man tending another man’s cattle, Tom agrees.

Still settling into a relationship, the two begin the journey and quickly pick up an itinerant Virginian, Heck Gilpin (Scott Cooper), to help with the herd. A little while later, they come across a suspicious man, Billy Fender (James Russo), driving a wagon full of young Chinese women (Jadyn Wong, Olivia Cheng, Caroline Chan, Gwendoline Yeo, and Valerie Tian). It quickly becomes obvious what he’s driving them to – a mining camp where they’ll be prostitutes – and that he’s already sexually abused one of them. Though the men find him distasteful, their initial plan is just to part ways with him in the morning. Until they wake up to discover he’s drugged them, stolen their horses and left them with the women.

Tom takes Fender’s old horse and tracks the man down, dealing out the Old West justice for a horse thief. But the men are now faced with the question of what to do with the women.
When they try to leave them at the mining town, they discover there’s no law there and are told by Lung Hay (Donald Fong) that slitting the womens’ throats would be a kinder fate. With no other choice, they decide to take the women with them along with an older whore Nola Johns (Greta Scacchi) who’s desperate to get out of town.

But Big Rump Kate (Rusty Schwimmer) the Madame who paid for the “Celestials” for her business isn’t about to let her investment slip through her fingers and she recruits Ed “Big Ears” Bywaters (Chris Mulkey) to go after them. Will Print and Tom get the horses and the women safely through to Wyoming before Bywaters and his ruffians catch them? And is there any hope for a romantic future for Tom or Print?

At a roughly 3 hour running time, the made for TV movie takes its time – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is time to develop the plot, the characters and their interactions with each other as well as show the magnificent scenery of Alberta, Canada which stands in for Oregon and Wyoming. There’s enough mud for realism and the towns have a rough “just hacked out of the wilderness” quality. The whores don’t wear satin dresses or feathers in their hair while the men’s hats have a nice “broken in” look to them. It’s obvious that the production crew took time to try and get the details right.

Robert Duvall is the obvious star of the show but only because of his great acting and ability to bring out the best in his coworkers. He’s at home on a horse and as Print has a gruff charm that reassures the frightened women who don’t speak a word of English. I figured before things started that he’d be just fine in his role but it’s Haden Church who surprised me. As one person said, he’s come a long way since “Wings.” He’s not trying to play the handsome, younger man role – in fact he looks kind of rough around the edges. The John Wayne quote “Talk low, talk slow and don’t talk too much” describes the character of Tom to a T. But along with his uncle, he’s a decent man who can’t simply abandon these women.

Another thing I like about this film is how it treats the female characters with respect. They aren’t just pale shadows upon whom wrong is done merely to serve as an excuse to goad the men to action. Greta Scacchi, in a wonderful character role, gives Print an unsentimental view of life as an aging prostitute. As the film progresses, she slowly regains her dignity – like a wilted flower given water – and ends up forging her own future. The Chinese women, despite their situation, provide some subtle wry humor as they comment among themselves about these strange men with whom they’ve ended up. I wish there had been more time allotted to differentiate between their characters but as it the two I remember best are Gwendoline Yeo – who goes after a relationship she wants – and Valerie Tian – who plays a woman whose feet were bound and who often has to be carried around. Hell, even Big Rump Kate – you’ll understand the nickname after seeing the movie – is a strong woman who takes nonsense from no man and who is a force to be reckoned with in the area.

The movie is filled with big sprawling scenery but manages to stay focused on the character driven plot. It has a natural, low key feel as the emotions flow from the acting and aren’t forced. I get the feeling that I’m seeing how life really was back in the day when life was still hard for everyone but especially still for women who had few options for survival. There is plenty of violence so be warned. But the chemistry between all the actors is superb and if you’re looking for a Western to sink your teeth into, it’s a film I highly recommend.

~Jayne

Related posts:

1. Friday Film Review: Thousand Pieces of Gold
2. Friday Film Review: Everyone Says I Love You
3. Friday Film Review: The Closer You Get (aka American Women)

I was casually perusing the Book Smugglers' blog when I came across this midyear list of their favorite books of 2010 and saw that Ana had given your debut, Bleeding Violet a grade of perfect 10.

Since the book's genre (YA with a paranormal flavor) is one I enjoy, I looked up Ana's review of Bleeding Violet. The book sounded unusual and well-written, and perfect 10's are a rare event on the Book Smugglers' blog, so I thought I'd give it a try. I downloaded Bleeding Violet from the Sony store to my ebook reader, began to read, and found myself engaged almost immediately.

The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street. I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived. For the first seven years of my life, we hadn't even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away.

Sixteen year old Hanna Jarvinen arrives in Portero, Texas to reunite with her mother, who isn't expecting her. The town of Portero isn't in any way normal, but then Hanna doesn't feel normal, either. She's not only biracial and bicultural (half African American and half Finn), but also bipolar.

As she approaches her mother's house, Hanna hallucinates her deceased father's voice coaching her on how to deal with her mother. Hanna's mother, Rosalee Price, left Hanna with her father in Finland shortly after Hanna's birth, and Hanna has no memories of Rosalee. But the voice of Hanna's father, Joosef, warns Hanna not to wake her sleeping mother by knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

So, after finding the spare key and letting herself into Rosalee's house, Hanna follows her father's advice to lure Rosalee out of her bedroom with the scent of a grilled cheese sandwich.

My grandma Annikki once told me that anyone who looked on the face of God would instantly fall over dead. Looking at my mother-’for the first time ever-’I wondered if it was because God was beautiful.

To Hanna, who did not resemble her Finnish relatives, Rosalee, who looks much like her, is beyond beautiful. Hanna wants nothing more than her mother's approval and love.

But Rosalee is not pleased to find her daughter in her kitchen instead of in Finland. As she learns that Hanna and her father came to the United States nine years earlier, and that in the last year, Hanna's father passed away, Rosalee notices the bloodstains on Hanna's clothes.

It turns out that Hanna struck her aunt Ulla, with whom she had been living, on her head with a rolling pin during an argument over whether Hanna should be committed to a mental health facility. And that discovery is how Rosalee learns that her teenaged daughter hears voices and is prone to violence.

While Rosalee tries to ascertain just how badly Ulla was injured, Hanna settles into the attic and unpacks her wardrobe of violet dresses. Hanna sews her own clothes, and she is going through a purple phase.

Rosalee does not want Hanna to move in, but Hanna digs in her heels and refuses to leave. And so, Hanna and Rosalee strike a bargain: if Hanna can fit in at Portero's high school and in the town within two weeks, she can remain in Rosalee's house. If not, she will leave.

Hanna is elated and determined to make friends and stay, but there's only one problem: she has never fit in anywhere.

Still, Portero is not anywhere. When Hanna goes to the school, she discovers that it is a very strange place, one where glass statues shaped like students get more attention than newcomers, where nearly everyone wears black clothes and uses earplugs for some mysterious reason, and where Hanna's geometry textbook turns into "A Teen's Guide to Living with Bipolar Disorder" with multiple choice questions like this one:

12. All work and no play makes Hanna ____________.
a. eat Cheerios c. go crazy
b. limp awkwardly d. very sad

At first Hanna thinks she's hallucinating, but then she begins to suspect that that's not exactly the case. The other students refer to Hanna as a "transy," and after school, Hanna asks her mother what the word means.

"A transient." She grabbed an apple for herself and leaned against the picture window, since she couldn't sit with me at the table. "Anything transient. Like a mayfly."

I knew about mayflies, had seen them in action during the slow summers at our lake house in Finland. Huge swarms of them rising like dark mist from the lakes, mating in the air in winged orgiastic abandon, only to flutter back down into the water, drained. Dead. An entire lifetime played out in the space of a few hours.

But what the hell was mayflylike about me?

Since the students treat Hanna with indifference, she decides the quickest way to gain acceptance is to attach herself to a popular boy. The best candidate appears to be Wyatt Ortiga. Unlike everyone else, Wyatt dresses in green. Students seem to hang on his every word. And Hanna finds him attractive, if annoying at times.

As Hanna gets to know him better, she discovers that Wyatt is as far from normal as she is, and that he is still hung up on his ex-girlfriend, Petra. But that doesn't stop Hanna from pursuing him. And Petra, who doesn't seem to be entirely over Wyatt herself, does not discourage this.

Petra grabbed my shoulders, leaning on me again, but this time so she could whisper in my ear. "Do yourself a favor and find someone tough, someone like Wyatt, who'll look after you. You'll thank me." She let me go and rushed off to join Lecy.

Someone tough to look after me?

Petra seemed like a nice girl, not quite the bitch I'd been expecting, but even if I'd wanted to be her friend, her attitude would drive me insane. Did she think this was the fifies? I didn't need some guy to look after me. I could look after myself.

The more Hanna discovers about how dangerous Portero can be, the more determined she is to face its threats head-on. And that means becoming more and more involved with Wyatt, who knows more about those dangers than any other kid in Portero.

Hanna's goal is to win the right to stay with her mother, and more than that, to win Rosalee's love. But with threats abounding from sources both supernatural and natural, what will she discover about Portero, about Wyatt, about Rosalee, and about herself in the process?

Bleeding Violet is one of the freshest and most original books I have read this year. I don't want to reveal too much of what is going on in the story, but the world-building is startling and surreal, and some scenes have a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality.

But as great as the world-building was, what I liked even more was the writing and the characterization. The dialogue was exceptional – snappy, surprising and real, while the narration was full of the contradictions that make Hanna such an interesting character.

Yes, the girl may be prickly, even pugnacious, and she's not above using her boyfriend, but her need for love and her determination to attain respect and acceptance made her indelibly appealing to me.

Hanna's relationship with Wyatt stands out from many of the teen romances I've come across because the two jump into bed pretty quickly. One of the things that impressed me was how much I liked Wyatt despite his difficulty in getting over Petra even after he was sleeping with Hanna. There was decency and goodness in Wyatt that Hanna sensed from the first but which he could not see in himself.

Rosalee was also a memorable character – seemingly cold in her constant rejection of her daughter, but more complex than she appears at first. And many of the side characters stand out too, from Wyatt's fierce mother to the insecure Petra to the objects that should have been inanimate but came to life and acquired a personality.

I have very few criticisms of this book. Although the portrayal of Hanna's illness did not seem realistic to me at first, I quickly realized that that was because of the book's surreal quality. I do feel that at one point, during the ramp up to the book's climax, the supernatural goings on overwhelmed the human conflicts a bit, but that problem quickly righted itself.

Besides that, I have just one gripe, and that is that not about the book itself, but about the typesetting for the electronic edition I read. As mentioned before, I purchased the book from the Sony store, and my copy was peppered with question marks in places where I think there should have been dashes.

But those minor caveats aside, I enjoyed Bleeding Violet enormously. Original, quirky, suspenseful, occasionally funny, romantic, and dramatic – it was all these things and more. A for this one.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony | Kobo |

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Violet by Design by Melissa Walker
2. REVIEW: Violet in Private by Melissa Walker
3. REVIEW: The Bleeding Dusk by Colleen Gleason

Violet Redmond is young, beautiful, and bored. It seems that no matter what she does, her popularity with the ton will not fade. Suitors flock to her side, even though she once threatened to cast herself into a well when arguing with one of them.

In the next to last book in this series (the Pennyroyal Green series), Like No Other Lover, Violet, the spoiled daughter of the Redmond family, visited a gypsy fortune-teller who told her that she'd be taking a journey across the water. The gypsy also spoke the word "Lavay." So when Violet hears Lord Lavay's name mentioned at a ball one night, and learns that he sails on a ship called The Fortuna, she finagles an introduction to the man and to his captain, Asher Flint.

Flint, on whom the title Earl of Ardmay has just been bestowed, is illegitimate and part Native American. He is described in the book's opening line as looking "like a bored lion lounging among a flock of geese," and as the story begins, he has just been charged by the king with capturing Le Chat, a notorious pirate preying on English ships. The title of Earl of Ardmay has ostensibly been awarded Flint for a heroic deed, but in actuality it is a way for the King to apply pressure. If Flint succeeds in apprehending Le Chat, he will be given lands to go with the title. If he fails, well, unspoken threats hang in the air.

Flint resisted accepting the earldom, but then Le Chat attacked The Steadfast, a ship belonging to Captain Moreheart, who had been a father figure and mentor to the fatherless Flint when he was a child. Moreheart did not survive the sinking of his ship. Now Flint is out for revenge, and he intends to capture Le Chat either dead or alive long enough to be hanged.

While dancing with Violet, Flint realizes that she reminds him of himself. Both of them are filled with ennui and would much rather be somewhere other than the ballroom. Flint challenges Violet on several levels, but then he spots her brother Jonathan and freezes. It seems Jonathan is a dead ringer for Mr. Hardesty, a sea merchant Flint knows.

Violet doesn't think much of this until she dances with Lavay and tells him that his captain mistook her brother for Mr. Hardesty. She learns from Lavay that Hardesty is well-mannered, educated, and has sailed all over the Mediterranean, but Lavay and Flint believe him to be the pirate Le Chat.

Lavay also mentions that Hardesty's ship is called The Olivia, and it is at that point that Violet is stunned to realize that Le Chat may be her missing brother, Lyon, who once loved Olivia Eversea. Not only is Hardesty's ship named after the woman Lyon loved, not only does Mr. Hardesty resemble Violet's other brother Jonathan, but "Le Chat" means "the cat" in French, and that fits with the name Lyon.

Ever since Lyon disappeared from Pennyroyal Green following Olivia Eversea's rejection of him, there's been a hole in the Redmond family-’and in Violet's heart. Violet tries to convince Jonathan to follow the clues she has gleaned from Flint and Lavay, but Jonathan laughs at the idea that their brother may be a pirate. Undaunted, Violet stows away on Captain Flint's ship, The Fortuna.

When Flint discovers Violet's presence aboard his vessel, he's both furious and admiring. Having a woman on board ship is a very bad idea – yet he can't help but recognize Violet's resourcefulness. Still, he intends to leave her at the nearest port, until he realizes that she may be right about her brother Lyon being Le Chat.

As Violet and Flint gradually fall in love, almost against their wills and certainly against their better judgments, they come to respect one another more and more. But rending their hearts is the knowledge that they are at cross-purposes: Flint wants to apprehend Lyon, possibly even to kill him, and Violet wants to save her brother's life-

I Kissed an Earl is not without flaws. The first couple of chapters were slow to engage me, since Violet came across as spoiled and rude in the very beginning of the story. She even repeated others' use of the word "savage" in reference to the part Native American Flint, which really turned me off.

Also, later in the book, when Violet was aboard Flint’s ship, the sailors on his crew seemed a bit too gentlemanly in regard to her presence there. It's not that I want to see Violet mauled, but rather that it stretches my credulity to believe that no one would ever try to cop a feel, especially when Flint had warned Violet that her presence on the ship would be too great a temptation to his men, and when no explanation was given for their subsequent self-control.

I also caught a few historical inaccuracies, from small ones such as the use of the word "tectonic" in its geological sense, to larger ones like Flint's intention to live in America although he has been given an English title.

But although I Kissed an Earl is not without flaws, there's no question that it is one of my favorite books of the year thus far. That is at least partly because the conflict between Flint and Violet – he wants to kill her beloved brother; she wants to save her brother from the man she loves – is on a scale not often seen in today's romances, and that depth of conflict gives the book heartrending poignancy at times.

The characters, too, are as memorable as their relationship. Although Violet starts out spoiled and bored with life, her saving grace is her fierce love for her brother Lyon. As she journeys on the high seas in her quest to find him, Violet is forced to grow into a more mature and capable woman. Her horizons broaden, her determination grows, and her love for The Fortuna's captain deepens. Where once she casually repeated the word "savage," in reference to Flint, she now steps in to defend him from slurs and insults, as well as worse. Her bravery and her capacity for love show through as she leaves the girl she once was behind.

As for Flint, he too loses his bored, detached veneer. Beneath this exterior is a man who has acquired everything he has through struggle, and who has risked his life for his fellow sailors over and over. While every risk he has taken has paid off advantageously for him – something that is no coincidence — he is also a man who has retained his humanity even through great adversity.

Not ever having had a family, Flint is thrown by the feelings Violet evokes in him. His plan is to found a dynasty with his Moroccan mistress, who is as much an outcast as he is, but through witnessing Violet's devotion to her brother, he comes to understand what family and love truly mean.

The emotions in this book are so palpable that at times, I felt as though I was literally present in Flint's cabin with these two people, intruding on something intimate and precious. A lot of that is due to the beauty of the writing. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite scenes:

The kissed raced like a lightning strike along his spine and seized his lungs with a simultaneous rush of panic and joy. As though he'd willingly flung himself backward from the mast to the deck and not only enjoyed the flight but survived the fall unscathed.

He inhaled sharply and tipped back into the space shaped like him and folded his hands beneath his head, hoping to appear insouciant but in reality trapping them. He was suddenly afraid of what they might do: Plunder. Caress. Explore. Dear God, take, take, take.

He held his body motionless. His heart took painful jabs at his breastbone. His blood was a thick, hot liqueur. His mind a useless scramble.

He could hear her breathing hard next to him. Was aware her fingers were at her lips. Touching them, as if to prove to herself she'd been kissed.

He listened to her breath, the ragged rhythm of it a counterpoint to the incessant sigh of the sea, but for some reason he didn't want to look at her. He closed his eyes instead and saw her hair, shadow-dark, pooled on the pillow, the shudder of her lashes against her cheeks; he conjured the shape and texture of her lips sinking, opening against his, her breath mingling with his.

That kind of gorgeous, evocative writing is the reason I Kissed an Earl is not just worth reading but also worth keeping, and my favorite of your Pennyroyal Green series. A- for this one.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony | Kobo |

This is a trade paperback published by NAL but pre-Agency pricing.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long
2. REVIEW: Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long
3. REVIEW: The Secret of Seduction by Julie Anne Long

When Submit Wharton married Henry Channing-Downes on her sixteenth birthday, she had no idea what to expect from this scholarly man 43 years older than she. Her father had named her to her purpose in life, but as Submit insightfully notes, he "was not very astute in his choices, merely lucky." And that luck had much more to do with the success of marrying his middle class daughter into society than in molding her personality. For while Submit was, in many ways, Henry’s "creature," she was not shaped into some milquetoast acolyte; rather, Henry pushed and challenged her into intellectual and emotional independence. That she tempered these with deep affection and love for her husband was more her choice than Henry’s, since he never mastered his discomfort with winning a pretty, bright, drastically younger wife.

And Henry is not alone in that; from his first peek at the young widow (he never saw or communicated with her until Henry’s death) Graham cannot make sense of Henry and Submit’s marriage, either, assuming the petite woman bound in yards of black silk must either be little more than an abused child grown sympathetic to her abuser or happily liberated from marriage to an impotent, arrogant, cruel old man. That she refuses both explanations baffles Graham, a man who, at 38, is at his own crossroads. He cannot decide whether he loves his mistress, a married American woman, Rosalyn Schild, who carts her cuckolded husband around like another piece of luggage, and whose audacious, extroverted beauty seeks the glamour of marriage to the Englishman who inspired the barely fictionalized sensation, "The Rake of Ronmoor" serial. A laundress has sued him for paternity of her twins, and despite his innocence, a sensational past has obliterated any convincing defense based on the truth.

While not in full ennui, Graham knows something in his life – he, most likely – must change, and that change occurs unwanted and unwontedly when Submit Channing-Downs shows up with a box of pornographic drawings featuring a much younger Graham Wessit and a popular actress. Henry’s will has instructed Submit to deliver the box to Graham, and neither is particularly happy about the result. Graham is forced to confront his unresolved feelings toward Henry, his cousin, his erstwhile guardian (Graham’s parents died tragically when he was eight), and a man who so deeply disapproved of Graham’s excesses that he did not protest when Graham was thrown out of Cambridge, prosecuted criminally, sentenced to prison, and then to the pillory for those pictures. That Graham was likely unconstitutionally capable of conforming to Henry’s expectations did not matter to either; Graham secretly wanted approval and Henry openly wanted obedience, and for years the two remained estranged.

The pictures, then, borne by Henry’s arresting young widow, seem both a punishment and a perverse opportunity. For Graham, there is one more chance to get back at Henry for being such an unforgiving son of a bitch. While Submit carries with her a small hope that Graham might help her in defending Henry’s will, which he wrote by hand in the service of excluding his only, illegitimate son, William, who is determined to win both title and property. William has already had Submit evicted from Motmarche and tied up the estate assets, leaving Submit with little money and even fewer public advocates. Graham, who has been half-heartedly lending William money, finds Submit’s independence and her isolation surprisingly appealing, even as he suffers embarrassment and anger over the "gift" from Henry of his scandalous past, hand-delivered by yet one more symbol of Henry’s superiority.

To say that Graham and Submit are befuddled and fascinated by each other is an understatement. From the beginning there is a force between them that belies their superficial differences, electrified by Graham’s antagonism toward Henry and Submit’s shock at the drawings (of course she peeked in the box!) and bafflement at Henry’s motives in sending her to Graham with them. Indeed, Henry’s presence dominates Submit and Graham’s relationship for much of the novel, by turns as judge, benefactor, antagonist, and primogenitor. At some points he seems a substantive presence in Submit and Graham’s tentative friendship, as Submit clings to his memory for support and Graham strives to re-direct Submit’s romantic interest to himself.

The extent to which Henry brings Submit and Graham together and the extent to which he keeps them at odds seem roughly equal. Graham wants so much to understand this woman who some liken to a crow (or in William’s case, to a spider), because "whatever it was about her that attracted, it was subtle." Like the way she can acknowledge Graham’s magnetism without being drawn too close to a man who dressed "as if he wanted not merely to bowl a person over but knock her down with his good looks." She disapproves of his experimentation with fireworks, while he disapproves of her unremittingly black wardrobe and dutiful mourning affect. And while both are at loose ends, emotionally, neither can find a safe harbor in the other’s company. In short, Graham and Submit rattle each other in profound ways. Submit is not interested in the trappings of Graham’s superficial bounty, while Graham is pruriently interested in what lies inside Submit’s dress, as well as her mind and heart. Graham is smarter and more insightful than he appears, while Submit is more rebellious and romantic than she appears. It is on some level chemistry – like the friction igniting Graham’s fireworks – that makes their attraction so frustrating and so irresistible:

“You are devastating,” he said honestly. Her skin, he realized, was flawlessly smooth, something a man wanted to touch. What she was was tactile. She had a fine, gold down along her cheek. He watched her mouth, waiting for it to open, thinking of the teeth that overlapped in front. He ran his tongue along the back of his own.

"Don’t do this," she said.

"Do what?"

"Pretend I’m your sort." Her eyes slid to him rather meanly. "Or you mine."

"I don’t have a sort."

"Of course you do."

"Which is?"

"Laughing, pretty women." A pause. "Mrs. Schild."

He made a disgusted sound. "So I am the dark and morose fellow with a penchant for trivial women."

"Mrs. Schild is not trivial."

He made a glum twist to his mouth. “You were meant to deny the whole description.”

He rolled out flat on his back.

In many ways, Black Silk is an elaborate strip tease, as these two characters slowly peel away their own and each other’s layers. And for much of the book, their budding friendship is quite chaste, which is ironic considering it is built quite solidly on a foundation of profanity, heretical disobedience, and impure desires. Yet there is an honesty in their evolving closeness that is disorienting enough to make them more and more visible, and therefore vulnerable, to each other. And over time that shared vulnerability begins to replace Henry’s ghostly imposition.

Henry’s importance, though, is not extinguished in Submit and Graham’s eventual union; in fact, it is the mystery of Henry’s motives that endures beyond the book’s conclusion. The aura of prurience surrounding his relationships with both Submit and Graham is not completely dissipated, either, although I would argue that it is transmuted by the authentic compatibility between Graham and Submit, as well as the prospect of their deep and lasting happiness together. And in that there might be a clue as to what Henry still has to offer these two people so powerfully shaped – positively and negatively – by what the world seems to expect of them.

Graham was confounded to remember Henry that week and his damned philosophical approach to life as he made what Henry would have called “Kierkegaard’s leap of faith.” To survive, all mortals had to trust in someone, something, Henry claimed. Though, unlike his friend Kierkegaard, Henry was not a God-trusting man; he made the leap of faith in himself-’as if he were God. In any event, for Graham it was an unsettling leap. He didn’t truly trust Tate, or Fate or Life, or even Henry or himself, for that matter.

In (simplified) Kierkegaardian terms, without that leap of faith, a person grows a hole inside that he tries to fill with various God substitutes. Thus grows his spiritual "despair," his distance from God and from peace, which creates unhappiness and dissatisfaction and can drive a person to curse and rebel against God (as Henry admitted on his deathbed he had done). So here are Graham and Submit – one of whom has so many friends and virtually no one he can trust, while the other has lost the one person she could trust, leaving her virtually friendless and homeless – feeling contradictorily attracted to someone who represents everything they distrust.

What does Henry’s refusal to take that leap of faith mean for two people Henry brought together in such a strange way? For Graham, "[a]ll his life, it had been perhaps simply this: Not wanting to be different from Henry so much as wanting all he had in common with Henry to total a different sum-’a happy existence." Submit, who had been happy with Henry, found in his death the fear that “[w]ithout him, it seemed a part of her grew dark, as if a light had been turned out, an aspect of her never to be fully known and loved again.”

There are many enmeshed images in Ivory’s novel and symbols accumulate quickly and plentifully: the black silk of Submit’s dresses and the black satin lining the notorious box of pictures; the ambiguities created by Henry’s obsessive will and the complexities among Submit, Graham, and William’s interconnectedness; Darwin’s theories and the question of whether Submit and Graham can adapt and evolve beyond their incomplete selves. Black Silk is intellectually rich and infused with a variety of philosophical and scientific principles and theories. It is a dense book, a difficult book, at times.

But for me, its brilliance lies in that powerful image of Kierkegaard’s leap of faith, which is echoed and reflected in the balanced fulfillment that Graham and Submit’s relationship ultimately represents:

“Submit, listen to me. There are probably good reasons why we shouldn’t be together. But the overriding fact is I love you, and you love me-’you need me. I can keep your life from becoming hopelessly earthbound. And I need you, as sure as leaps in the air need gravity.”

The leap of faith Submit and Graham take is not essentially spiritual, although it certainly transcends anything they had previously experienced. And unlike Henry, who could never accept his own happiness with uncomplicated contentment, Graham and Submit have the opportunity to combine their very opposite, elemental characteristics such that their leap is one to faith in love – their own and each other’s – to joy and acceptance and the trust that comes from the interdependence of two unique and independent individuals. In this, I find Black Silk’s superlative (A+) genius, along with my own joy in knowing that the faith I place in the world Ivory creates is unquestionably a leap worth taking.

This book can be purchased in used mass market paperback. Avon also re-released the book in a nice trade paperback format which you can buy new or you can buy in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The Amazon Affiliate link earns us a 6-7% affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link (or anything for that matter) and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

Related posts:

1. DUAL REFLECTIONS, PART 1: Black Silk by Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas)
2. REVIEW: The Serpent Garden by Judith Merkle Riley
3. DUELING REVIEW: Black Ice by Anne Stuart

When I first read the book in 2001, I fell in love with it from its earliest pages. Therefore, this time, I approached the prospect of rereading it with both excitement and trepidation. How could a novel possibly be so satisfying a second time? Yet how could a book that had transported me to such heights fail to enchant me again?

The storyline of Black Silk centers, to some degree, on Graham Wessit, the thirty-eight year old earl of Netham, and on Submit Channing-Downes, the twenty-eight year old widow of Graham’s cousin Henry, the Marquess of Motmarche.

Although we only get to see him in Graham and Submit’s memories, the deceased Henry plays a significant role in the book from early on, when his will sends his widow, Submit, to present Graham with a small bequest.

Henry’s death has left behind not only a venerable Marquessate and a wealth of unentailed properties whose possession has now become a bone of contention between Henry’s widow and his illegitimate son William, but also a small, mysterious black lacquer box whose contents call into question everything Submit thought she knew about her husband.

Submit was fifteen when she met Henry and sixteen when they married. Her father, a commoner who made his fortune from a butchering business, wanted very badly for Submit to marry into the nobility, and Submit was, if not exactly true to her name and submissive, then more than willing to make a social success of herself. Henry’s interest in her was wholly welcome to Submit, although her husband was forty-three years her senior.

For twelve years, Submit and Henry had a happy marriage, and their contentment with each other was as satisfying to them as it was incomprehensible to others. Since the marriage began with Submit sixteen to Henry’s fifty-nine, for all that Submit viewed Henry as a husband, not a father, he still had a significant role in shaping her character, her tastes, and her outlook on life.

After opening the box, Submit begins to wonder if there was another dimension to Henry, one she did not know about. She attempts to deliver the box to Graham, a cousin of Henry’s whom she has never before met, hoping that he will have an explanation of its contents -’ one that will enable her to continue to view Henry with the same admiration she has always felt for him.

But Graham is not interested in admiring Henry, and he himself is also a study in contradictions. He has many flaws, as Submit and society see it. For one thing, he is often embroiled in one scandal or another, a state of affairs that began when he was a young boy and his father shot and killed his mother (since Graham had been raised by nannies, this did not damage him as deeply as it might have otherwise).

The latest of these scandals is the pregnant girl who descends on Graham at his club in the first chapter, a laundress carrying twins she falsely accuses him of fathering. It hardly matters to anyone but Graham that he is innocent of these charges, since he is guilty of much else. Even his friends accept the pregnant girl’s word without giving the matter much thought, causing Graham to alternately nurse wounded feelings and ponder all that he may have, wittingly or unwittingly, done to bring about this circumstance.

Then there is the childlike joy Graham apparently takes in everything from extravagant house parties to his very married mistress, Rosalyn Schild. Rosalyn is popular, vivacious, and American, and Graham tries to be in love with her. But the affection Rosalyn inspires in so many people doesn’t add up to the solid commitment from Graham which Rosalyn craves and Graham thinks she probably deserves.

Into this situation comes Submit, bearing what Graham recognizes as Pandett’s Box, a container he would no more open than he would “a box full of adders.” Somehow, Submit’s presence turns into an invitation from Rosalyn to visit in her home, and Submit, who is staying at a very modest inn on a limited income while the court debates whether Henry was of sound mind when he left her the bulk of his estate, accepts the invitation.

Submit hopes to pin down Graham on the subject of Henry and the box, or at least, get him to take the troublesome container off her hands. But the Henry Graham describes is not the Henry Submit knew and loved. Although he took Graham into his home as a child, Henry’s attempts to discipline Graham met with resistance, and Graham’s view of his cousin and former guardian is far more critical than Submit’s.

Graham unsettles Submit, not just because he makes it difficult for her to enshrine her memories of her husband, but because of his seemingly capricious enthusiasm for things like fireworks and photography, his disturbing self-awareness when it comes to his notoriety and leading man looks, and most of all, the way he defies easy categorization.

For his part, Graham also finds Submit difficult to catalogue. She and her relationship with Henry are two enigmas, puzzles he can’t seem to solve. She is not what Graham thinks of as Henry’s type — and yet she was Henry’s wife, in every sense of the word. Submit’s presence in Rosalyn’s home causes Graham to begin to reexamine Henry, and Henry’s motives in sending Submit to personally deliver Pandetti’s Box.

If these two people aren’t complex enough, the other characters are also multifaceted. Henry, Rosalyn, William, and the pregnant girl I have already mentioned. There are also Arnold Tate, the Queen’s Counsel who represents Submit in her lawsuit and Graham in a paternity suit the pregnant laundress brings against him; Gerald Schild, Rosalyn’s faintly pathetic but also faintly heroic cuckolded husband; and an interesting former lover of Graham’s named Peg.

Will Graham win his paternity suit and clear his name? Will Submit win her own suit and become the wealthiest widow in England? Will William overcome the obstacle his illegitimate birth presents to the courts and become the next Marquess of Motmarche? Will Rosalyn ever come to care that her husband Gerald still loves her, or will she keep pining for marriage with Graham? Will anyone ever understand Henry’s mind, heart and his will (in both meanings of that word)? And who is writing The Rake of Ronmoor, a serial based on the thinly-disguised love life of one Graham Wessit? Most importantly, will Graham and Submit ever realize how marvelously well-suited they are for each other, despite their oppositions; how well they fit together regardless, or perhaps even because of, all their contradictions, ambiguities and sharp angles?

These are the questions at the heart of Black Silk, which is surely, from a literary perspective, one of the most accomplished novels in the genre.

I have to acknowledge that I have never had such a difficult time writing a review as I have with this one, for three reasons: (A) I was afraid I would fail to do justice to the many marvels of this book, (B) there is so much material to talk about in Black Silk that I feel I am in danger of writing a book about it, rather than a review of it, and (C) as badly as I wanted to enjoy this book unreservedly once more, the truth is that this time, I do have reservations.

Ivory plumbs her characters to an astonishing depth, and lets us see each one through the multiple perspectives of other people who are both blind to some aspects and keenly perceptive of others. She can also make me forgive almost anything — even Henry, whom I might normally view as a child molester, becomes a human being worthy of attention and sympathy.

If there is a more insightful author in the genre I don’t know who it is, and she is also a wordsmith of the first order. Her prose is like Graham: playful and celebratory. It has the richness of white chocolate mousse, and it is also filled with joie de vivre and generosity. She has a love for human foible and for every physical sense, and reading her, I feel as though she wants to fling her arms around the whole of creation itself.

The first time I read the book, I was enthralled from the very first pages, and so deeply absorbed in the many rich and subtle shadings of the characters, and in the beauty of the words themselves, that it didn’t even occur to me to think of this book as slow-paced. I remember shrugging when others complained that it crawled for them.

This time, though, I was really daunted by its length (I estimate it is about one and a half times as long as today’s single title romances) and it took me about forty percent of the book to get absorbed in the story. Oddly, it was the description of Henry’s courtship of the teenaged Submit that drew my attention more successfully than the beginnings of Graham and Submit’s relationship. But even after this point in the story, I could only read several pages at a time because there was so much to take in on each page, and the end result was that I took a full month to finish reading the book.

You know the line in Richard III, where he calls out “My kingdom for a horse!” This book is stunning, superlative, but for much of the time I was reading it, I felt I would have given a kingdom for a little more narrative drive, something to make me turn the pages- not fast, exactly, but faster.

If I had to try to verbalize what I feel, is that I wish Ivory had done more distilling. The novel lacked potency for me. There were layers upon layers of characterization, of symbolism, of subtleties, and there were linguistic pyrotechnics to equal Graham’s fireworks, but it was like something essential got lost, or tangled up, in all those layers, and eclipsed by those verbal shooting stars.

The book felt like a complex, elaborate, beautifully wrought intellectual exercise. The blood-pumping heart of the story seemed to me, this time, to be buried under layers and layers of cerebral fat. I could see that Graham and Submit were perfect for one another, but I wanted to feel a deep, irreversible connection between them. I wanted my heart to beat faster at the thought of these two people connecting.

I don’t know if it’s intellectual laziness on my part — I hope it isn’t — but when I read, I want to feel the characters are exposed to me, laid bare, in all their painful vulnerability and hearts full of yearning. Here, I just didn’t get enough of that. I got everything else about these characters, detail upon detail, but not enough of their deep, vulnerable cores. It’s like the story was as encumbered as Submit in her hoops; it couldn’t take off and run.

I felt as if there was a glass wall between me and the characters and I can’t really say why it was there this time but not the first time I read Black Silk. I can say that it makes me very very sad that I felt that way. I’m not sure if it’s a lack in the book, or a lack in me.

And so, grading the book is as difficult as writing about it. I now view Black Silk as a flawed but brilliant book; and whereas eight years ago I would have had nothing but praise for it, and given it an A+++, I will now add a word of caution for readers to be patient with it, and lower my grade to an A. Because even with all my reservations, I can’t give it less than that.

This book can be purchased in used mass market paperback. Avon also re-released the book in a nice trade paperback format which you can buy new or you can buy in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The Amazon Affiliate link earns us a 6-7% affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link (or anything for that matter) and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Spy Wore Silk by Andrea Pickens
2. DUELING REVIEW: Black Ice by Anne Stuart
3. Raising the Sexual Acts Stakes (Part review, part rant)

Barbara Vey of Publishers’ Weekly asked those attending Lady Jane’s Salon in New York City for three words that describe a hero. Many of the respondents went for the superficial (tall, dark and handsome was one answer and yet another said “Sexy, handsome and luscious”): sexy and strong.

One author appeared to be stumped and said that at the spur of the moment all she could think of was the covers. Blogger (and aspiring author), Kate Gabbarrant gave intelligent, brave, and sense of humor. Another author (Sara Lindsey maybe?) said loyalty, strength, and courage.

One author said “my dad.” Only one author said “loving”. Some of the authors gave competitive, dangerous or mysterious as one of the three adjectives describing a hero. Kathleen O’Reilly said “Funny, confident but not arrogant, brunette.”

I’ve always thought the perfect hero is described in this Trisha Yearwood song which is admittedly more than three words:

I like a man who will lay down beside me
Stand up to me, cry on my shoulder, crazy about me
Can live without me too
That’s what I like about
Can’t live my life without
That’s what I like about you

I figure that the sexy and handsome traits materialize in my imagination once other elements are met.   After all, we love the Beast stories.   Some of the most unattractive heroes are the most beloved such as Stan from Suzanne Brockmann’s Over the Edge, who had a face “only a mother could love” or To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt where the hero made women scream in horror and young kids cry.

What makes the perfect hero for you? What qualities are must have in a hero? Alternatively, what traits do heroes have that are flaws to be overcome or a trait that automatically disqualifies someone from being a hero (ie incest, cruelty to animals, children or something less extreme).

Related posts:

1. Hero/Heroine Preference
2. REVIEW: Hero the Amazon: An Historical Romance by Sam Bonnamy
3. Read for Pleasure Makes the Case for Used Book Sales v. New

I have a bone to pick with you. I’ve got a packed read-and-review schedule for the next month or so, and I need to be able to move from book to book. But you’ve made that impossible. Yes, I blame you. It’s your fault that your book, Jellicoe Road, left me so drained and dazed that I can’t read anything else.

I tried. I tried a sexy historical romance. I tried a contemporary erotic novel. I tried a thought-provoking science fiction story. I tried one of my very favorite books from last year. I even eyed another YA. I put them all back down after a page or two.

It’s not that they were bad. They just weren’t your book. They weren’t Jellicoe Road.

It really isn’t fair of you to write a book that’s so beautiful and powerful that everything else pales in comparison.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me explain that when I picked up this book to read for Keishon’s TBR challenge, I was cheating a bit. Yes, technically speaking Jellicoe Road was first published in 2006 (The Australian edition called On the Jellicoe Road), but the American edition came out in 2008, and it’s only been sitting in my TBR pile for a few months.

I first heard of this book here on the YA YA YAs blog. Then I heard that it won the American Library Association’s Printz Award. Then it was selected for DABWAHA. At that point I bit the bullet and bought it in hardcover, a purchase that was worth every penny and then some.

I read Jellicoe Road for the TBR challenge because this month’s theme is “Tortured hero or tortured heroine,” and I had the sense that this book had its share of tortured characters. Boy, was I right about that.

The heroine of the story, Taylor Markham, is a seventeen year old boarding school student at the Jellicoe School, which is about 600 kilometers from Sydney. Taylor was abandoned by her mother in the bathroom of a 7-Eleven when she was just eleven years old. A woman named Hannah began taking care of her at that point, and Taylor suspects Hannah knows something about her mother, but whatever it is, Hannah won’t reveal it.

Taylor enrolled in the Jellicoe School when she was thirteen. When she was fourteen, a hermit whispered something in her ear and then shot himself. But Taylor can’t remember what he told her, and she has other memory gaps as well. She also dreams about a boy in a tree who knows things about her. Sometimes her life feels like a mystery that she can’t solve.

Just after the hermit committed suicide in front of her, Taylor took off to try and find her mother. On the way to Sydney she met a boy named Jonah Griggs, who is rumored to have killed his father, and who is one of the cadets, military school students who camp near Taylor’s school for six weeks every spring and every fall.

The kids from Taylor’s school have a territorial war with the cadets and with a third group of students who live in the town, known as the townies. So Taylor’s running off with a cadet was not looked on well by her fellow students. But Taylor and Jonah made a connection. Taylor opened her heart to Jonah and trusted him, and when he called an adult to come and take them back to their schools, she felt betrayed.

Now, three years later, Taylor is unwilling to trust anyone again. She presents a hardened exterior to the world. Despite this, Taylor is chosen through some convoluted politics to be the leader of the Jellicoe School kids in the next round of wars. The leader of the townies is Chaz Santangelo, who has a history with Taylor’s friend and supporter, Raffaela. And the leader of the cadets is Jonah Griggs. So Taylor must come face to face with Jonah again, this time as two leaders of enemy factions.

And just as this is about to happen, Hannah, the one constant in Taylor’s life since her mother abandoned her, disappears from her house without a word to Taylor.

As this story unfolds, told in Taylor’s first person narration POV, it is interspersed with third person italicized fragments of another story, about a group of kids who were involved in a car accident that killed the parents of three of them. The connection between the two stories isn’t revealed until deep into the book, so I won’t say what it is.

Can Taylor lead the Jellicoe School? Where has Hannah gone to? Will Taylor be able to piece together the secrets from her past, or unearth her lost memories? What about Jonah Griggs? Is he truly the enemy, or does he care for Taylor more than he allows her to see? And how is the story of the other group of kids relevant?

The above is a summary of what the book is about, but it doesn’t do justice to how moving it is, how good the writing is, or how memorable the characters are. Taylor is indelibly so. Although she has a lot to be tortured about, she is the last person to wear her suffering on her sleeve. Instead, she has a stony demeanor.

Here, for example, is an exchange between Hannah and Taylor which takes place when Hannah informs Taylor of the transfer of some girls to the dormitory Taylor is in charge of:

“Transfers,” she says, handing me the sheet. I don’t bother even looking at it.

“My House is full. No more transfers,” I tell her.

“There are some fragile kids on that list.”

“Then why transfer them to me?”

“Because you’ll be here during the holidays.”

“What makes you think I don’t have anywhere to go these holidays?”

“I want you to take them under your wing, Taylor.”

“I don’t have wings, Hannah.”

But for all her prickliness, Taylor’s inner thoughts eventually reveal her vulnerability. Here’s a scene that comes when she is floating on water:

My body becomes a raft and there’s this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes–the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.

If Taylor isn’t what she appears to be at first, neither are many of the other characters. Their layers are peeled back gradually, and involve discoveries of things neither Taylor nor the readers know, so I don’t want to reveal them. In fact, it takes a few chapters to figure out exactly what is going on, but that is part of the charm of the book, because the reader’s confusion mirrors the sense of mystery Taylor feels about her own life. Some of the puzzles take most of the book to be put together, and although I guessed at certain truths before Taylor understood these things, that did not lessen my enjoyment of the book.

In fact, “enjoyment” seems like too mild a word. After its slow start, the book gathered more and more momentum, until I was completely swept away from thoughts of my own life. I became so invested in Taylor and the other characters in the book that some sections seemed heartbreaking to read, albeit in a cathartic and healing way. I laughed and cried — or, as my husband put it, “blubbered.” When I finished this book, my tear ducts felt completely empty.

I loved the intricacy of this story, the way so many small and seemingly unimportant details turned out to be important in the end, the way the different threads connected. It’s a rare book that seems so seamless when I finish it, that takes such complete hold of me with its magic.

Despite its YA designation, Jellicoe Road deals with a lot of adult themes, and includes a romance and even a couple of brief sex scenes, so while I would not recommend it for younger kids, I do wholeheartedly recommend it to older teens and to adults.

Thank you, Ms. Marchetta, for writing such a powerful, beautiful, unforgettable book. A for Jellicoe Road.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon. No ebook although this is a HarperTeen release and HT is fairly good about ebook releases. At least you know who to contact if you want a legitimate digital copy.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Road to Hell by Jackie Kessler
2. REVIEW: Road to Love by Linda Ford (5/08)
3. On the Road to the Final Four

Exactly one hundred days to her marriage to her husband Andy, Ellen Graham literally crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Leo. Ellen describes their encounter this way:

From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched the waitress wiped down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

Although Ellen is happy in her new marriage to Andy, when her cell phone rings only minutes after the encounter and it turns out to be Leo, asking where she is, she tells him. He arrives shortly. Since they haven’t seen each other in several years and their breakup was painful for Ellen, she’s pleased to tell him she’s now married. Leo, who says he has missed her and apologizes “For everything,” suggests that they try out being friends and despite her better judgment, Ellen hears herself agreeing.

Ellen gradually tells the reader the story of her past. She is originally from Pittsburgh. Her mother, a junior high school math teacher, died of lung cancer, leaving thirteen year old Ellen, her older sister Suzanne and their salesman father bereft.

When it was time for Ellen to go to college, she applied to Wake Forest, a school in North Carolina. The roommate she was assigned could not have been more different in her background. Margot is the daughter of a rich and prominent Atlanta attorney and a beauty queen from Charleston. She has flawless manners and a fondness for the color pink. Yet despite their differences, the girls hit it off and became fast friends, and it was through Margot that Ellen met Andy, Margot’s older brother. For many years, though, she thought of Andy as nothing more than Margot’s brother.

After graduating, Margot and Ellen headed for New York, where they got an apartment and started looking for work. Nothing great panned out for Ellen, so she took up waitressing to earn her keep and photography because it interested her.

Margot encouraged Ellen to treat her photography as more than a hobby, and eventually Ellen found a job as a film processor in a photo lab. She was twenty-three year old and working there when she got summoned for jury duty and was immediately intrigued by one of her fellow prospective jurors.

Leo was then in his late twenties, originally from Queens and working as a reporter for a small newspaper. He had dropped out of college after three years because he could not pay for a fourth year, and his brothers and father were firefighters. Leo has dark hair, olive skin, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, and Ellen felt a powerful sexual pull toward him right away.

When Leo was selected for the jury, Ellen disregarded all the advice she got from Margot’s brother Andy, an attorney, on how to avoid jury duty. Instead, she did everything she could to get selected, too. She was chosen, and eventually their mutual belief in the defendant’s innocence drew Leo to her. When Leo suggested that he visit her hotel room, against the rules for the sequestered jury members, Ellen tried to refuse, but what came out of her mouth was the word yes. As she observes, “It would be the first of many times I couldn’t say no to Leo.”

From that point on, Ellen and Leo became nearly inseparable. Ellen made herself completely available to Leo and did everything she could to impress and please him. At first, it appeared they were both passionately in love. They spent months in deep conversations and intense lovemaking, revealing everything to one another and comforting each other over their losses and vulnerabilities.

But after about a year of this, a gradual shift took place, and Ellen began to feel that while her feelings for Leo were as powerful as ever, Leo’s were becoming less so. He made it clear to Ellen that marriage was not for him. And then, after New Year’s Eve of 1999, when he failed to meet her at a party and did not call her that night or the next morning, Ellen suggested that they break up, thinking it would lead to the confrontation she wanted. Instead, Leo agreed with relief, and Ellen left his apartment feeling dumped.

In the wake of her breakup with Leo, Ellen found herself in a tailspin. She kept hoping Leo would change his mind and come back to her and spent her days listening to sad songs, staying in bed, neglecting her appearance, eating junk food and generally wallowing in her misery.

After months of this, Margot stepped in, telling Ellen that Leo made her “needy, spineless, insecure and one-dimensional,” that the pictures she took during that relationship were some of her worst, and that in essence, she needs to stop wasting her time on him.

Margot’s words snapped Ellen out of her self-pity, and she bought herself a new camera the next day. During the next year, Ellen learned all she could about photography, and got a job as the second assistant to a respected photographer. In the two years that followed, she learned even more and her confidence grew. She also dated a little bit, and healed a lot.

Then, while in Atlanta to celebrate Thanksgiving with Margot’s family three years after her breakup with Leo, Ellen ended up washing the dishes alongside Margot’s brother Andy. He asked after her and her family, and then if she’s single, and that is when Ellen realized Andy was interested in her and that she could fall in love with him.

Andy and Ellen had a smooth courtship that ended in marriage after three years of dating, and as the book begins, Ellen is doing well as a photographer and very happy with her husband. Andy, is as she says “approachable, friendly and somewhat goofy,” as well as “very cute” and “very successful.” Ellen says of the way their romantic relationship began:

It might not be as titillating as striking a love connection with a dark stranger while sequestered on a murder trial, but in some ways it was even better. It had substance. A sweet, solid core. A foundation of friendship and family–the simple things that really mattered, things that lasted. Andy wasn’t about mystery because I already knew him by the time he asked me out. Maybe I didn’t know him well, and the knowledge I did have was mostly filtered through Margot–but I still knew him in some fundamental, important way. I knew where he came from. I knew who he loved and who loved him back. I knew that he was a good brother and son. I knew that he was a funny, kind, athletic boy. The sort of boy who helps with the dishes after Thankgiving dinner, ulterior motive or not.

But when Ellen returns home from the diner, she decides not to tell Andy about her encounter with Leo, because Andy knows that her relationship with Leo was, in her own words, “intense,” and she is afraid he might be hurt. Instead, Ellen makes passionate love to her husband, trying to obliterate Leo’s presence from her mind.

When Ellen and Andy fly to Atlanta to visit the pregnant Margot and her husband Webb, Ellen is disturbed to find a message from Leo on her cell phone, one in which he says he has a question for her. She resolves not to return the call, but changes her mind when her preoccupation with what Leo’s question might be interferes with her ability to enjoy her visit with Margot and her in-laws.

So Ellen finally calls Leo back, and he reveals that he has a great opportunity for her — he’s arranged for her to photograph rock legend and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Drake Watters for the cover of a magazine. It is a huge career break for Ellen, but she does the right thing and calls back to leave a message on Leo’s machine turning it down.

But several days later, when Ellen’s agent calls about the same job, Ellen, assuming that Leo has taken himself out of the picture and is being generous, feels that she can accept the work.

Since Ellen’s sister Suzanne is a huge Drake Watters fan, Ellen allows her to tag along to Los Angeles for the photo shoot. But when Ellen arrives at the shoot’s location, she discovers Leo is waiting there. Will Suzanne, who always liked Leo and is less than approving of Ellen’s wealthy new family, prove an adequate chaperone, or will Ellen give in to her attraction to Leo?

Love the One You’re With is written in Ellen’s nicely conversational voice. As was very much the case with your first book, Something Borrowed, you do a very good job at portraying your heroine’s moral dilemma, her desire to do the right thing and the attraction she finds difficult to resist.

The book is propelled by a great deal of suspense surrounding the question of what moral lines Ellen will cross and what lines she will remain behind. Even as I wondered if Ellen would cheat on Andy, or even if not, what the fallout might be from her keeping secrets from him and from Margot, I found myself liking all the characters. There are no bad guys here, just imperfect human beings.

I also liked the way Ellen’s mother’s death and her lower middle class background affected the romantic conflict. Ellen had reinvented herself by going to Wake Forest and befriending the wealthy Margot. There were times when I wondered if she hadn’t married Margot’s brother Andy partly because his family was warm and loving and she did not have a mother. Leo’s background was more similar to Ellen’s, in that neither of them had rich parents, and they also both shared a love for New York.

But it was clear that Ellen did love Andy, despite the powerful attraction and unresolved feelings she had for Leo. As I read, I found myself torn between Andy, who was such a nice and committed guy, and Leo, who was more sexy to me, and who clearly also had feelings for Ellen.

In the end, I was mostly satisfied with Ellen’s choice and with the resolution of the story.

I also liked the way you portrayed the characters. Ellen is the star of this book, and she is mostly likable and understandable. There are a few times she behaves immaturely, but since she knows she is being immature, it was easy to forgive those instances. I thought the way she interrogates herself about her own choices, and the way she tries to justify or rationalize some of her more questionable actions was very lifelike and real.

Leo has a kind of charismatic appeal that makes it easy to understand Ellen’s attraction to him. He has just a little bit of the brooding loner and the dangerous bad boy in him, but at the same time, he also shows a very human and sympathetic side that makes it tempting to forgive him for the rough breakup that he put Ellen through, and for coming on to a married woman.

Andy is the quintessential nice guy, and he is mostly sweet and thoughtful, calm and calming, and clearly committed to Ellen. I have to say though that I wish that Andy’s courtship of Ellen had been shown more in the book, because I think then I might have found him as romantic and appealing as I did Leo, whereas without that, Andy’s slight goofiness did not always charm me, and I did wonder whether he and Ellen had enough in common.

Margot and Suzanne were interesting characters too, so completely different from one another yet both important to Ellen, in her corner at times, but far from perfect themselves. Ellen’s friendship with Margot feels almost as central to the story as her relationships with Andy and Leo, and I love the way you emphasize female friendships in your books, and make them as interesting as they are in real life.

While I found the ending of Love the One You’re With a bit rushed, I enjoyed the book much better than your most recent one just before it, Baby Proof, and almost as much as Something Borrowed. Something Blue remains my favorite of yours, but since Love the One You’re With was suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable, I recommend it to our readers and give it a B+.

Sincerely,

Janine

PS for readers. Since the spoiler of who Ellen chooses in the end has been requested — Ellen ends up with Andy.

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format.

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