Classic Romance/Modern Twist

Juliet

Anne Fortier

Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Fiction/Romance/Adventure
16 discs, 20 hours

This book hit the wrong nerve with me from the very beginning. I kept reading because I had an audiobook copy (so no effort, basically), and I got it in order to write a review. In the end, I'm glad I finished it, but I didn't necessarily like it. There are a few spoilers in this review, so if you feel you'd like to read the book and judge for yourself, please skip to the last paragraph where I give my recommendations. 


The story is about a modern awkward twenty something girl, Julie, with a twin sister, Janice (who is nothing but a cheesy cliche), whose parents had died when they were quite young, living in Italy. Since that time, and as far back as they can clearly remember, they'd lived in the States with their great aunt, Rose and a 'handy man' Umberto (can't find the spelling anywhere, so forgive me if it's incorrect). After the death of their aunt, Julie is given the task to go back to Siena, Italy to find/protect the family treasure. 


Obviously, from the title, you can discern that there is a connection between this book and Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. The play (in the story) is based on actual historic families and two forbidden lovers. The story is split in two for most of the book, one side being Julie's quest in the present, and the other is the story that unfolds in the documents her mother left for her, recounting the 'true' story of Romeo Marescotti and Giulietta Tolomei from 1340 AD (If you like books with parallel stories, try The Bone Garden by Tess Gerrison. LOVED that one.). I did like the split in this story, but only because the story taking place in 1340 was infinitely more interesting than the modern plot. 


I think most of my problem was with the narration of the story. Cassandra Campbell reads the book, and though the two modern twins grew up in Virginia, she only very rarely drops into a southern twang, and then it's usually on one or two words, and then it disappears again. Also, every time she read an Italian word or name, she'd launch straight into an Italian accent, no matter who was speaking it. Irk. Personal pet peeve perhaps. 


This problem seemed to be a theme, however, as the writing and characters all experienced this inconsistency. I think the dialogue between Julie and Janice is the best example. Janice's character is the worst, because although Julie explains in detail how evil/selfish/greedy Janice is by nature, she is constantly flip-flopping between snarky bitch and 'genuinely' concerned with her sister's choices. Actually she flip flops between every emotion she is allowed to portray in this book and snarky bitch. It's as if Anne Fortier kept forgetting who Janice was supposed to be, and added smart ass remarks in editing or something. It felt very disconnected. And by the end of the book Julie and Janice are BFFs. Really? That conclusion doesn't seem reasonable from what was laid out for us in the first few chapters.


The relationship between Julie (modern descendant of Juliet) and Alessandro (modern descendant of Romeo) is absolutely schizophrenic. One night they hate each other, the next they're flirting, the next she is suspicious of him again, running away terrified, then they're back to falling in love before she finds out something more and is suspicious again and runs away. Over and over and over. Most of the time Julie had a surge of enamored emotions toward Alessandro, it wasn't when he was next to her, it was when she found out something about him from somewhere else. It didn't feel real. It didn't feel like these two modern people were meant for each other. It didn't feel like anything special was happening between them at all. 


Above all, the most annoying thing about the two girls, Julie and Janice, though it isn't mentioned TOO often, is that they are after a fortune. They both assume, once their Aunt Rose died, that they would each inherit quite a large sum of money to pay off their debts. Julie goes to Italy expecting to find a fortune their mother left for her, and is completely unappreciative of the historical documents she found, even though she had apparently been obsessed with the play Romeo and Juliet for as long as she could remember. It seems to me someone like that would consider a journal recounting the true story of Romeo and Juliet to be a priceless treasure, not a means to an end. 


Now, I don't have much of a background with Shakespeare (which I regret, and hope to remedy), and I've only read pieces of Romeo and Juliet in lit classes, but I do know the gist of the tragedy. This is why, I think, I enjoyed the 1340 version of events. I'd be interested to find out if or how much research Fortier did on the pre-Shakespeare story, to see how much she molded to fit her own means. (One more complaint, then I'm done! How is it that all of the objects that play a part in the 1340 chain of events survive to be found by the characters in the modern plot? I find that highly unlikely). 


While there were some things that just seemed a little too convenient, and most of the plot 'ah-ha's were simply misunderstandings, the story was, at least, interesting. I liked the scenes with the modern artist character Maestro *something, I totally forgot his name*. I imagined his workshop as dark, dusty, and warm. A place you could sit down and have a cup of tea surrounded by beauty, history, and mystery. He may be my favorite character (I know, how could I have forgotten his name then?). 
Also, I enjoyed learning about the details of their mother's journey, which you don't begin to learn about until the very end of the book. And of course, the bit of romance there was between modern Romeo and Juliet, just before going to the weird party of Alessandro's god-mother's. (Huge Spoiler! Though seriously, if she's a 25 year old virgin, she is not going to just sleep with this guy she's known a week and isn't even sure she can trust!). 


Overall, I think this book is a little bit of a shame, I think it could have been a whole lot better with just a little more time, and some intense editing, because the story itself is very good, and a great concept. I would recommend this book to women who like historic-ish fiction and don't mind whiny, at times unreasonable characters, which so many modern lit (especially romance) stories contain. The plot does eventually all tie together, it is just the middle that is a little messy. It is a light, semi-fast paced, and eventually endearing story. If you aren't easily annoyed by cheesy dialogue, then I think you could enjoy it. Also, I recommend a printed version. The audiobook really just didn't do it for me. 


Until Next Time!

Another Religious Adventure

The Book of Names

Jill Gregory & Karen Tintori

Fiction/Thriller

To Buy Amazon - Barnes & Noble

Here's another review for Audiobook Week (an occasion I didn't know about this until I stumbled upon a twitter hashtag on Tuesday). The book is seven discs, (8 hours), and is narrated by Christopher Graybill.

It took me awhile to warm up to Graybill's reading, as it is with nearly every audiobook I listen to. Generally my first thought on track one is something like 'this guy/gal sounds so weird, how did he/she get this job?!' but about five minutes in everything is fine, and the voice simply becomes part of the story (except in one or two very bad cases). It catches my interest when an audiobook includes some kind of audio detail that you don't always hear, and in The Book of Names, it was sort of an echo microphone effect used when characters were either thinking to themselves or conversing through a telephone. It was a little odd sounding, but it was very effective within the story. The book is broken down into very small 'chapters', usually jumping points of view as the action sets up, typical thriller set up. I've seen some audio books that use multiple narrators to cover the voices, but that wasn't the case here. Graybill used variants of his vocal range and regional accents to cover the entire character spectrum. Some of the voices seemed a little exaggerated, but there was an international cast of characters, so it worked pretty well.

It is said that there are 36 souls in each generation that are capable of complete spiritual enlightenment. If any of them die prematurely, leaving less than 36 righteous souls at any time, the world becomes more chaotic. If all of them should die, the world as we know it, comes to an end. These names were recorded by Adam from the word of God, and were passed down until eventually the Book of Names was lost in time...

I liked the story - the fast pace and interesting historical questions made the time pass quickly while I listened at work. I have a love of old cultures and traditions, so many of the subjects discussed in the book intrigued me: Kabbalah, Tarot, Zodiac, biblical references, the Tree of Life, and of course, any secret societies (there is a bit of a conspiracy theorist in me)! I have little to no knowledge about Judaism, so a lot of the content was new to me, and I'm not completely certain what was fact and what was fiction, but it doesn't detract from the story.

The plot was very DaVinci Code esque:

In the DaVinci Code, Robert Langdon, a world-renowned symbologist (a person who studies symbolism throughout time and cultures), who teaches class at Harvard University, is sought out to help solve the murder of the Louvre curator. After analyzing the body and teaming up with a police cryptographer, Langdon begins an incredible journey of puzzles, history, and alternate biblical conspiracies.

In The Book of Names, David Shepard falls off a roof when he is young, and has a near death experience. Ever since that time, names fill his mind, names he's never heard, people he's never met - and he records them in a journal. We find out that these names are the same names in the fragments recovered from Adam's Book of Names. Unfortunately, a dark, evil, secret society, the Gnosios (I think, I only listed remember? The word derives from Gnostic) also finds out that David knows these names; names they have been desperately trying to recover for generations in order to destroy the world as we know it, to have it born anew.

The plots are fairly similar, but one thing really jumped at me. In DaVinci Code, Langdon is the teacher. He goes through his adventures with a knowing and calculating mind, and all the tools he needs as his adventure progresses. Shepard, on the other hand, knew nothing of any religious affiliations or even anything strange - for all he knew, the names were just a slightly strange side effect from a nearly fatal accident when he was a kid. I mean, his degree was in political science (his dad was a senator), and neither of those facts came in handy for him, except for one character he met through his father. I'm not sure which is more annoyingly convenient; having a character that 'happens' to know everything he needs to survive, or a character that depends on the people he 'happens' to meet along the way - I think the latter, because how could he have known who to trust? If he had let the wrong sort of person know about his gift, the story could have concluded with the end of the world.

As it was, David Shepard happened to hear one of the names on the news one day as he was writing it down - the woman had been murdered. Once the initial shock passed, he began searching for the other names, finding many of them also deceased. Unsure of what to do next, he asks his best friend and colleague, a professor of religion, who refers him to a Rabbi, and the adventure goes from there. Before he sees the Rabbi, however, he received a call from his step-daughter, whose mother had just remarried. The new husband adopted the daughter, changing her name to something very familiar to David...one of the names on his List...the list of people who mysteriously end up dead.

Reread: Merchant Princes

The Merchant Prince Series

Charles Stross

Science Fiction/Series

To Buy (Book One) Amazon - Barnes & Noble

I hate to continue writing posts few and far between, about books that really aren't that great.....but I just finished the first two books in The Merchant Prince Series by Charles Stross, and I'm just jumping back into a reading-all-the-time phase (so look for some more reviews coming up soon).

This is the second time I have started this series: once about five years ago (on a recommendation from my mother, who was recommended by a friend), and I got through book three, The Clan Corporate; and started them again last week, reading through books one and two, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family, respectively. 

The books have an interesting premise - a family who is genetically exclusive to a world walking ability that our main character happens to stumble upon early in the first book: The Family Trade. I admit, the first book captivated me, but finished with too many loose ends (as they do when it's part of a series eh?). The second book, however, tied up nearly every plot point that interested me from book one, so I feel no real desire to continue reading (in fact, I don't even remember what the third book is about from my first reading...everything I remembered about the books was from books one and two). 

The story starts in crisis, as many thrillers do, where Miriam Beckstein stumbles onto a corporate money laundering mess that gets her fired and on the run. Her mother then chooses this critical moment to pass down relics from her 'real' mother (Miriam was adopted), including a strange locket that she will soon find out is a passport to another world. What she doesn't know, is that there is a sophisticated mob of her own blood family members in that world, who end up kidnapping her and introducing her to the family. 

Miriam realizes that this new world is medieval in much of the politics and technologies, and she hopes to wean her aggressive family members off the drug circuit in her world, and onto pursuits of making a profit from advancing the new world into modern civilization. I assume this is what the rest of the six book series is about (book two adds many juicy details a plot twists, adding a convenient intermediate third world), though the writing didn't urge me to keep reading. 

To me, the story started to get dry with the backdrop of Miriam having to convince her drug cartel family members to drop the drug trade and invest in something more worthwhile. Though the conversation was varied, it seemed like getting their approval was all  Miriam thought about and talked about with all of the characters. She is a very driven person, and always seemed to know exactly what to do - this means either she was much more clear headed and logically thinking that I am, or that this woman was created in the mind of a man. Also, the politics and genetics of the family was explained to death, which I mostly skipped over...as a reader, all I cared about was which characters were able to world walk and which weren't, not particularly why. 

Basically, these are good books if you are looking for something to entertain you and make your mind work around inter-galactic phenomena. We all, at some point, hope to find a good long series of books we can really latch onto, because lets face it, it can be very difficult to find a good book these days. This series may be that for you, it just wasn't for me. Then again, as I said - I read them once and they were always in the back of my mind, had to read them again to scratch the itch of half-memories. 

Have any of you read this series? Am I missing much by stopping at two? Please let me know!

Looking Back: Palo Alto

Palo Alto

James Franco

Short Story Collection/Fiction

To Buy Amazon - Barnes & Noble

Youth is a turbulent time, its undisputed.

If you think twelve year olds going out at two a.m. and shooting anything and everything with paintball and bb guns, affairs between soccer coach/teachers and 14 year olds (consensual), acting violently and irresponsibly after hearing a girl you like is with someone else (as in driving twenty miles over the speed limit drunk), occasionally running people over, or pimping out a new friend to everyone in town, all within one community, actually within the same group of friends, then you will probably love Palo Alto, the first short story collection published by James Franco.

I was interested in this book because of a blog I read somewhere of someone who went to one of his first readings from it, but I really bought it because, frankly, who doesn’t want to see if a celebrity is actually good at more than one thing (instead of just doing the things anyway because they have nothing better to do with their money). Turns out, James Franco IS good at more than one thing, but perhaps not what you’d think. Could it be juggling? Dog breeding? A musical instrument of some kind? …Writing (seeing as this is a review of his recently released book)? Sadly, no, none of these, not yet.

Was that enough suspense? The two things are, acting (presumably), and being a student. Not only does Franco have a master’s degree of fine arts from an ivy league school, he’s also taken fine arts classes at OTHER ivy league schools, just to learn. I respect that. I can relate to the desire to constantly absorb new ideas and hone a craft. The gathering of knowledge is invaluable; this, also, is undisputed.

Now, I’ve never taken fine arts classes, or even known anyone who has, so maybe I’m just out of the loop. If you are a fine arts master/major and love this book, great (although you should probably stop reading this).

When I started this book, I immediately hated it. Not fair, you say? Let me explain. I thought, ‘alright, there are probably three to five stories here’ (based on other short story collections I’ve read of about the same length, specifically The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel, which I liked a lot, you can see my review on my old blog, here), and I already heard it had a dark tone, so that is what I was prepared for. What I didn’t expect were stories five pages long told in first person, short, choppy sentences. I forgave the first story, thinking it was an alright perspective for the material covered. I was thinking it was maybe the introductory story, to get the reader prepared for the rest of the book, by putting the worst stuff in the beginning. I thought perhaps the first story was some sort of ‘the incident’ scenario and the rest of the stories would branch off from there (think, Crash, which, if you haven’t seen already, do so immediately). Instead, it was a jumbled assortment of friends living in Palo Alto (which, if this book is based on any sort of fact, I recommend anyone who lives there with children or a will to live in peace, move from…immediately).

The stories were too similar. All of them were told in the same odd sentence style as the first story, and all of the characters were basically the same person, differing only in their motivations. I can see clearly what he was trying to do. The book is split into two parts, each section consisting of stories by different members of the same group of friends (one group in the first section, and a different, though similar, group in the second section, to be clear).

Some of the themes throughout: consequences, peer pressure, and recklessness. For being told in the first person, I don’t think we saw enough of what the characters were thinking, we saw virtually only what they did, and what they did was bad. The writing wasn’t bad, per se, it was obviously stylistic and done on purpose, I just wasn’t feeling it. Like I said, I don’t think it did much to distinguish the characters by making them all tell stories the same way. In a book of first person stories, I think the sentence structure and voice of each character should be differentiated, because people don’t think the same, no matter that they grew up together or how much time they spend together. In my opinion, that was the biggest fault.

I was thinking of reading another serious short story collection to review together with comparisons, specifically Full Dark, No Stars by the talented Stephen King, which I may still do when I read it (sittin’ on my shelf), but then I watched my friend Dean’s latest book review video (Here’s a link to his channel, prepare yourselves!). The review was of Dubliners by James Joyce, which I had honestly never heard of. Listening to him talk about it though, reminded me of what this book wanted to be. Take a listen.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone to read this book, because I didn’t enjoy it, and I don’t think it contained any universal truths about life that need to be heard. I think the thought behind the story wasn’t a terrible idea, just needed a little bit more thought and a bit more practice. Maybe I’ll read his second book, if it comes to that.