When your book was offered to us for review, I was intrigued enough by the blurb to request a copy. When I received the book and started reading it, I wasn’t sure what had initially drawn me to it. Not that it looked bad; it just seemed like the sort of literary women’s fiction that I generally avoid. I am not a big reader of women’s fiction as it is, and when I do read it, I tend to favor funny chick-lit over serious women-bonding stories (OMG am I the only one who thought The Friday Night Knitting Club was just so bad?). I wasn’t sure if The Lost Book of Mala R. would feature lots of female bonding, at first, but I could tell within a chapter or so that it was modern literature of the sort that I often have a problem with. That is, the characters, their lives and personalities were rendered in a depressing, even ugly, light.

This is what I think is considered in modern literature to be “realism”, and it’s what drives a lot of readers to romance or mysteries or spy stories. I can live with bad things happening in a story, but I hate when the writing itself seems to be infused with a sort of contempt, or at least a lack of emotional generosity towards the characters. It makes reading a grim experience.

But I’m getting off track here; it wasn’t that The Lost Book of Mala R. was entirely grotesque in its depiction of the characters, but it was unpleasant and grimy enough in the early pages to give me pause. The reality of the rest of the book was both better and worse than I had begun to expect.

The story is told in alternating chapters by four women, one in 1948 and the other three in the present day. Mala Rinehart belongs to a group of gypsies in Texas, but in the first chapter, she is cast out for the period of one year, accused of causing bad things to happen with her spells. Mala is 18 years old and only really close to her broken-down alcoholic father Beni; she has always been an outsider in the clan. She decides to travel to Bakersfield, California to see if she can find a woman named Ruth Simon. Ruth knew Mala as a child and was kind to her, and told her to come to her in Bakersfield if she ever needed a home.

Meanwhile, in modern day Southern California, in a faceless new-ish subdivision whose denizens all seem to have been hit hard by the recession, a notebook that Mala wrote cryptic notes and spells in surfaces at a garage sale. It’s scooped up, on impulse, by Linda, a recent (and reluctant) transplant from New York. Linda is married to Peter, a divorced father of two in the financial business. Peter’s transfer (it’s implied that it was a demotion) has uprooted Linda from a comfortable and hard-gained life, and she’s not happy about it. She’s even less happy when Peter’s 10-year-old daughter, Paige, comes to stay for the summer, and possibly longer. Paige isn’t getting along with her new stepsiblings back in Connecticut, but Linda certainly doesn’t want her there. Paige makes her nervous; she may be only 10, but she’s already given to incisive observations and subtle put-downs that put Linda on the defensive.

Linda ends up giving the notebook to Audrey, who is married to Mark and has a 12-year-old son. Audrey seems to adore her son, but she’s less enamored of Mark; ever since losing his job he’s gotten involved in weird money-making schemes that seem to combine a cultish self-help message with a genuine and bizarre belief that one can live forever (if only one limits their diet to super-healthy food, and precious little of that). Audrey has recently begun an affair with William, a young disabled war vet who she met through her job (she works for an agency that finds low-cost housing for returning veterans). William is pretty obviously a distraction from Audrey’s dissatisfying life, and Mala’s little book provides another one, one that quickly begins to obsess Audrey as she decides to see if she can find Mala (or find out what happened to her).

The third woman in the modern day group is Christine; when Audrey convinces Christine to try a spell from the book, her already troubled life takes a turn for the worse. Christine is pregnant, which is a good thing, but sure she’ll miscarry just as she has so many times before. She’s so sure that she and her husband Tim go forward with a meeting with a potential surrogate, one they’d found before the latest pregnancy. Christine’s pregnancy has persisted further than any of her previous ones had, but she’s unable to really be happy about it. She’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop and disaster to strike. When it does, it’s from an entirely unexpected direction. Tim becomes a suspect in the murder of a local nanny, and then, when Paige disappears, a suspect in her disappearance. Christine isn’t sure she trusts Tim, which naturally enough further strains a relationship already strained by years of fertility problems.

The chapters covering Mala’s story are generally the most absorbing; this may be partly due to my preference for historical settings over modern-day ones (especially modern-day ones rendered so grimly as this one). But Mala is also generally a much more sympathetic, relatable figure than Linda, Christine and Audrey are. She’s half their age and then some, but she’s miles less self- absorbed than any of them. I found myself a lot more interested in what would happen to her than I was in Audrey’s affair, Christine’s pregnancy or Linda’s neuroses.

Of the three, Audrey was probably the most compelling, and again I think I can track it to self-absorption or lack thereof. Sure, Audrey is flawed, but at least she’s interested in the world around her, interested enough to want to find out about Mala (a device that is never entirely realistic; it feels pretty arbitrary). Linda and Christine go along for the ride but both are pretty consistently wrapped up in their own low-grade misery. This is where the literary “realism” comes in – none of these women seem remotely happy. Like, I’m not expecting nothing but sunshine and roses, but the depression and ennui that hangs over these women is just not something I want to read that much about.

The Lost Book of Mala R. would seem to have something in common with female-based friendship stories, except that Linda, Audrey and Christine don’t seem to be that great friends. Linda has lived in the neighborhood for less than a year, and her unhappiness about being there and general lack of warmth make it hard to imagine anyone really warming up to her. It’s unclear how long Audrey and Christine have known each other, but I didn’t get the sense of real affection between them – theirs seemed to be a friendship of proximity, and a fairly superficial one at that.

I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more depth of characterization in the depiction of Linda, Audrey and Christine. Each has a backstory that is only really hinted at; at times I find it hard to keep their backstories straight (the exception was one trauma in Linda’s past that is alluded to, finally explained and resolved). They also seem to mirror each other in that each of their husbands has suffered financial hardship in the recession – apparently none of the women really expect to be their husbands’ equals in the financial sense, though Christine and Audrey do work.

So, what does this book have going for it, after all of my picking apart? Well, strong prose, for one thing – this is a well-written book. Perhaps because of that, and because of the alternating-story form, I found myself eager to pick up the book each time. That’s a big plus for me – there are books that I’ve probably liked more in a lot of ways but didn’t feel that compelled to read on a daily basis. The characters do become more sympathetic as the story progresses, and thus I found their navel-gazing less depressing than I otherwise would have. The various crises are resolved in some interesting and unexpected ways, though the one I cared about most was the most downbeat.

If I had a rubric for grading The Lost Book of Mala R., the grades would probably be all over the place. I think they’d average out to a low B, skirting the edge of a B-. I think it’s worth reading, but probably only for readers who are intrigued by the subject matter and don’t mind a little grim literary realism in their fiction.

Best regards,

Jennie

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Some have told me that Seduce Me at Sunrise was as good as Kleypas’ penultimate book, Dreaming of You, featuring Derek Craven and Sara Fielding. The book had some similar underpinnings with the hero being of the lower class with a grotesque background who feels completely unworthy to be loved by the heroine, a gently bred young woman. What I thought was similar was the strong emotional connection between Merripen and Win, the leads in Seduce Me at Sunrise.

There’s a papable physical attraction, but even more than that is the fierce emotional ties that bind them.

Win says to Merripen:

I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night I long to tell you so many things, but I am not free yet I hope to be well enough someday to shock you again, with far more pleasing results.

Merripen thinks of Win:

Because it wasn’t hers to give.

Your heart is mine, he thought savagely. It belongs to me.

Winnifred was struck by scarlet fever and while she survived, her physical state was greatly weakened. She was pretty much an invalid. When her sister marries a wealthy man, the family now has the means to get Win medical care. Win chooses a risky and experimental clinic in France. It may kill her but it also may make her well. She feels that if she wasn’t so frail and delicate, if she wasn’t an invalid, then Merripen and she can be together.

Merripen would rather Winnifred stays an invalid for the rest of her life because at least she would be alive and with him. Merripen is a gypsy who was taken in by the Hathaway family when he was left for dead by his tribe. He’s fiercely protective of the family and loves Win desperately. He believes can’t ever hold her or really have her because he isn’t good enough for her given his background. His existence on this world, though, continues only because she is here. Win goes off, gets better, and returns but after two years and one letter from Merripen Win wonders if she shouldn’t just move on. So when she returns, she brings back her doctor, Julian Harrow. Julian and she have grown close and Win brings him home with her so that he can have the chance to woo her.

If romance readers read primarily for a visceral reaction, this book will be hugely successful because Merripen and Win’s strength of feeling for each other is remarkable. The problem, for me, however, was that the details, character motivations, and plot were kind of a puzzle to me. Merripen mistrusts Harrow from the beginning. There is something off about Harrow yet Merripen does nothing to protect Win from Harrow even when she wants him to, even when he has the perfect opportunity to do so. This reaction was so curious given that Merripen loved Win more than the breath in his own body.

There were long stretches of story given over to revisiting Amelia and Cam which I thought were pleasant but unnecessary, particularly when I really didn’t understand Merripen’s motivations or Win’s motivations.   The villian’s motivations were as murky as anyone else’s and given that villianry plays an important part in Win and Merripen’s emotional breakthrough, it was important for me to have some kind of understanding as to the why the villian acted in a certain manner.

As brave as Win was, she certainly played a secondary role to Merripen, Cam, Leo (her brother) and sometimes even Amelia. Indeed, I found that Leo had the best lines and seemed to steal whatever scene he was in:

“Most women have a tragic attraction to rakes,” he said regretfully. “I really shouldn’t use it against them.”

and

“Now you’ll weep for a different cause,” he told Amelia. “Because as you see, I’ve come back as well.”

She flew to him, and was swallowed in a strong embrace. “The French wouldn’t have you?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.

“On the contrary, they adored me. But there’s no entertainment in staying where one is wanted.”

and

The comment seemed to incense her beyond all expectation. “I am aware of your reputation as a skirt chaser, my lord. I find no cause for humor in it.”

Leo didn’t think she found cause for humor in much of anything. “My reputation has lasted in spite of a nearly three-year absence?” he asked, affecting a tone of pleased surprise.

“You’re proud of it?”

“Well, of course. It’s easy to have a good reputation-’ you merely have to do nothing. But earning a bad reputation- well, that takes some effort.”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I look forward to Leo’s book. His wry, sardonic way lent a good dose of humor to a book that could have been overwrought with angst. The emotional tone of the book was well balanced. It was just that the machinations of the characters often seemed contrived as did events that furthered the plot. The ending, in particular, had an air of convenient romancelandia scriptedness to it. A reader is not likely to be disappointed in having read the book, but I did hope for something more. B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format. Come on, SMP, what are you waiting for?

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