Cinderella or Pygmalion?

Carnegie’s Maid by Marie Benedict

Clara Kelly was not who everyone thought she was, and this accident of mistaken identity lands her the position of lady’s maid in one of the wealthiest homes in all Pittsburgh, that of the Carnegie family. If Clara is to help her family back in Ireland, then keeping up appearances is what she’ll have to do, even when Mrs. Carnegie’s eldest son Andrew starts to treat her not like a household employee, but as an equal and maybe something more.


At first glance, this looks like a classic Cinderella story, but on closer inspection, we see many divergences. Cinderella wanted to free herself from her terrible family, and Clara hopes to some day reunite with hers. Cinderella let her emotions carry her away, but Clara does everything she can to keep hers in check. More importantly, Cinderella had very few ambitions of her own and it seems she left her fate to others, while Clara knows she can rely only upon herself to survive, and possibly one day thrive in this new world. Finally, Cinderella was transformed from a poor peasant into a princess by a man, but Clara is forced to transform herself to improve her life and the lives of her family. With all these differences, perhaps this is the opposite of a Cinderella story, except for the fact that both come from nothing and end up with something better.

On second thought, maybe this is more like a Pygmalion story than Cinderella one. If we go back to the Greek mythology of Pygmalion, we know this is the story of a sculptor who falls in love with one of his statues, who the gods bring to life so the two can marry. Of course, it is the sculptor whose name is Pygmalion, and not the statue, but that’s beside the point. The parallel here in Benedict’s story is that Clara begins to come out of her shell when she begins studying the Carnegie businesses and Andrew begins to help her with her investigations, and later consult with her on these topics. However, unlike in Ovid’s tale, but closer to George Bernard Shaw’s play of the same name, we understand from the prologue of Benedict’s book that Andrew and Clara do not end up as a couple. Where Benedict combines the two is in how both Clara and Andrew end up transformed in one way or another through their association with each other.

Of course, it is less important to decide if this is a Cinderella story, a Pygmalion story, both or neither, than it is to see how carefully Benedict draws out this story. When it comes to this, I have to say that Benedict did a perfectly lovely job. We love Clara because she is strong, principled, while at the same time, willing to do almost anything to save her family. We admire Andrew because he’s that self-made, self-taught man who started with nothing and struggled to become one of the wealthiest people in the world. Even so, neither of them are perfect; Clara knows she’s living a lie, and Andrew’s affluence seems to have made him forget where he came from. Benedict melds these two characters – her fictional Clara and what she’s garnered about the real-life Carnegie – into a tale that is both charming and heartwarming, while at the same time, poignant. More importantly, Benedict lets you have empathy for Andrew, despite his faults, so that the emotional connection between him and Clara makes perfect sense.

I also found that although the story takes place in the mid-1800s, Benedict carefully highlights many things that are very relevant to today’s world, some of which borders on political commentary – in particular, class struggles, inequitable wealth distribution, and how money and power sometimes blind the affluent to the socioeconomic troubles around them which their greed often causes. Although this might sound like Benedict takes up a preaching soap-box, in fact, the style of the prose here is anything but that. Benedict uses language here in a very measured way, to build up an atmosphere of wariness that slides between guarded hope and discernible anxiety, without ever getting either maudlin or miserable.

Overall, I found this a very absorbing and enjoyable read. Benedict is a very talented writer with a gentle style, who has given us a book that isn’t overly heavy or romantic, has a very good balance of historical fact and creative fiction, with carefully developed, sympathetic characters and a well-rounded, believable story. The only thing that kept this from being perfect for me was at the very end. However, since I don’t give away any spoilers, I’ll leave it to say that I can warmly recommend this book and happily give it four and a half stars out of five. (Now I want to read Benedict’s first novel, “The Other Einstein” even more than I did before.)

Sourcebooks Landmark will release "Carnegie’s Maid" by Marie Benedict on January 16, 2018. This book is available (for pre-order) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, Kobo audio books, eBooks, iTunes (iBook or audiobook), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books as well as from an IndieBound store near you. I would like to thank the publishers for sending me an ARC of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

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Border Life

All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan

Liat is spending time in the New York apartment of friends, while she studies for her translation degree. Hilmi is living in Brooklyn, trying to make it as an artist. Their whirlwind romance would be uneventful except for the fact that Liat is Jewish and comes from Tel Aviv, and Hilmi is a Palestinian from Ramallah, in the West Bank. With this book, Rabinyan brings us an exquisitely crafted, modern “Romeo and Juliette” story that strikes at the heart of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can tear people apart.


NOTE: As the year 2015 was ending, the Israeli Ministry of Education, headed by Naftali Bennett, announced that they were banning Dorit Rabinyan’s novel from being part of the Israeli High School literature curriculum. This immediately turned this book into an "overnight" best seller, and spurred translations for the international literary world. Well, thank you Minister Bennett, because had you not banned this book, I would never have gotten to read it (yes, I can read Hebrew, but being dyslexic, it is a very slow and tedious process). Bennett claimed that his ban wasn’t racist, but rather he objected to the “portrayal of the IDF” in the book (which got, maybe, all of five sentences). However, we all knew that what he was really objecting to was the taboo romance between an Arab man and a Jewish woman (so yes, he is a racist). Ironically, if Bennett had bothered to read the book before banning it, he would have found out that the absolute last thing this tragic love story does is promote interracial or inter-religious relations.

All politics aside (difficult as this may be), I believe that what Rabinyan has achieved here is simply stellar. As noted above, essentially this is a classic plot of star-crossed lovers, using a setting where everything in their lives, both internal and external, is against them. Hilmi is making a life in New York, and Liat’s life is in Israel. While neither of their families would approve of their relationship, Rabinyan also shows us the internal turmoil that both Hilmi and Liat have knowing from the onset that their relationship is doomed. That neither of them can view their emotions as casual, only means that neither of them can walk away without causing each other and themselves pain. Even when they’re both back home, and only an hour away from each other, their worlds are still separated, both by a boarder and by history. All of this is told from Liat’s viewpoint, where each piece of her connections to Hilmi come across with both sensitivity and profound emotions, that leap from the page and affect us viscerally.

It isn’t easy to describe just how deeply this book touched me. On the one hand, I’m a hopeless romantic; love should be able to conquer all; and we can’t help who we fall in love with. When it comes to love, the only thing that should matter is what kind of a person you are, not your religion or your nationality. Yet, knowing what I know and how impossible their situations are, I didn’t want Liat and Hilmi to get overly attached. I could almost feel their internal struggles going on within me, mostly because of the deep empathy that Rabinyan evokes through this story, which is precisely what excellent writing is all about. I only wish that I could have read this in Hebrew, because as blown away as I was with this translation by (Man Booker International Prize winner) Jessica Cohen, the original must be even more amazing.

In short, there is nothing here that I could fault with this book. The plot, the characters, and above all, the writing, are all carefully crafted and come across with remarkable depth, beauty and poignancy. I can’t simply recommend this book, I must urge you to read it, and it deserves even more than a full five stars (take THAT, Minister Bennett, and what's more, I'm updating my 2017 "best of" list to include this as tied for first place).

Serpent’s Tail in the UK released "All the Rivers" by Dorit Rabinyan on March 2, 2017, and Penguin Random House released it in the USA on April 25, 2017. This book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, Kobo audio books, eBooks, iTunes (iBook or audiobook), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books (free worldwide delivery, support literacy) as well as from an IndieBound store near you.

PS/FYI: Am Oved published “Gader Chaya,” the original Hebrew version of this book, in 2014. "Gader Chaya" is Hebrew for hedge, but a purely literal translation would be "live border."

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A Calculating Woman

Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini

This is the fictionalized story of Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace. In real life, not only was she the only legal child of the famed poet Lord Byron, but she was a talented mathematician and scientists, who made huge contributions to those worlds during the late 19th century. In Jennifer Chiaverini’s novel, she becomes much more than that.


Although I usually start my reviews with the positives and then follow them with misgivings, I’m going to depart from tradition with this book, and I hope you’ll understand why. As some of my readers already know, I’ve noticed that with historical fiction, authors don’t always know how to reach the perfect balance between fiction and facts. This happens most often when there is a plethora of true information available about that person, even when it seems that few people know about them. This is precisely the problem I had with this book. While it may seem unfair of me, once again, the book I was hoping to read and what I received, were two different things.

To be specific, I already knew a little bit about Lady Lovelace, in that she had some hand in the mathematics that went into building a machine that many would consider the forerunner of today’s computer. I also knew about the punch-cards used in Jacquard looms to create intricate patterns and designs for woven fabrics, and how those cards eventually led to using a similar system for inputting data into computers (and I’m old enough to have worked on a computer like that). So, my interest with the Lovelace of then and learning more about what she did that led to computers was irresistible to me. Unfortunately, the opening 30% of this book focused solely on Lord Byron and his marriage to Ada’s mother, through their disastrous separation. While this give the reader great insights into Ada’s long-suffering mother, and motivation for how she treated her only daughter, I’m almost certain that this could have been deleted from the book without any detriment whatsoever.

When Chiaverini finally got to Ada’s tale, I was really hoping that we’d get quickly into the real meat of the story. However, Chiaverini starts out by leading us to believe that Ada could recall the most obscure details of her early life, even from her first weeks and months after her birth. With this conceit, coupled with a surplus of intrigues and scandals within the extended Byron family (that lasted decades), Ada’s accomplishments seemed overshadowed, apart from the many references to how deeply (almost obsessively) she loved to study math and science. Of course, the irony here is how often Chiaverini notes that Ada wanted to do something and be recognized in the world for her own accomplishments, and not just as Lord Byron’s only legitimate daughter.

You might ask, therefore, why I bothered to finish reading this book. The fact is, I couldn’t stop reading it because Chiaverini is such a marvelous writer. Her style beautifully fits the period, with lush descriptions (although I could have done without some of the details of the dresses) that made every scene come alive. Yes, there were times when I found myself skimming some of the text, but that was very rare. I know I use the word “compelling” often when reviewing books, but when the shoe fits… and Chiavernini’s prose just kept me fascinated, so kudos to her for that. Furthermore, the readers will feel an intimacy with Lady Lovelace throughout this book, as Chiavernini writes it fully from Ada’s viewpoint, as a type of fictionalized memoir.

In addition, I must admit that Lady Lovelace’s contributions to the field of math and science, though significant in hindsight, weren’t what anyone could call massive, or extensive, or even large. What she accomplished were three very important influences upon Charles Babbage and his “engines.” Those were her suggestion to use the Jacquard loom punch cards for more efficiency of entering data, her publication of her notes on Babbage’s work, and her writing an algorithm for one machine. By the way, that algorithm is arguably considered to be the first “computer program.” So, with only two breakthroughs and one major publication (which the world of science initially lauded, but then dismissed after they found out that it was written by a woman), I realized that any historical fiction novel about Lady Lovelace would be very thin indeed if it didn’t include at least some of her family’s history – both famous and infamous.

In short, if you’re looking for a book about Lady Lovelace that divorces her from her renowned father and his notorious life, this isn’t it, but I’m afraid that novel will either never get written, or will be very short. However, if you’re looking for a novel that encompasses everything that Lady Lovelace was and did, and everything that influenced her short life, this is just the thing. Mind you, I personally think it included far too much extraneous information (particularly the first 30% of the book), but that only proves how marvelously well researched this book is, and that’s in Chiaverini’s favor here. All things considered, I’m still willing to recommend this book, but I can only give it three stars out of five.

Dutton (a division of Penguin Random House) released "Enchantress of Numbers" by Jennifer Chiaverini on December 5, 2017. This book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo (eBook or audiobook), eBooks, iTunes (iBook or audiobook), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books as well as from an IndieBound store near you. I would like to thank the publishers for sending me an ARC of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

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My Top Five (or more) Books of 2017

Those of my readers who have been following this blog for a while, know that I had to stuff seven novels into my favorites of 2016 list, and eight books ended up on list for 2015. This year, I have nine books that deserved a full five stars. Notably, one of these is a non-fiction book. Since I usually make these lists about fiction, that one non-fiction five-star book will get a special award. That means that once again, I need to cram eight books into this list. With no further ado required, let the countdown begin.

#5 – Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney – this novel took its inspiration from real-life poet and Macy's ad-writer Margaret Fishback, who gained fame for her clever ads and humorous poetry in the 1930s. This delightful book of historical fiction brings an essentially unknown woman into the limelight at last. (Oh, and by the way, where have you been all my reading life, Kathleen Rooney?)

#4 – Girl in Disguise by Greer McCallister – in McCallister's second novel, she takes on telling the story of Kate Warne, America's (and maybe the world's) first female detective, who walked into the Pinkerton's Detective Agency in 1856 and insisted Pinkerton take her on as an agent. With the little information left about Warne and her escapades, Macallister succeeds in weaving a story of intrigue and mystery in a tale that will fascinate as well as educate.

#3 – Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss TIED with The Golden House by Salman Rushdie – Krauss’ long awaited fourth novel is, to my mind her best yet. In this book, Krauss gives us parallel stories of two characters that travel from New York to Tel Aviv, while neither of them ever meets the other. Despite these disconnected tales, Krauss leads us to draw our own comparisons and contrasts with what she both reveals from and hides underneath their adventures. Rushdie’s latest novel moves back into the realm of solid reality, to revolve around the newest wealthy family at "The Gardens," a gated New York Community - the Golden family. Not only do they all have strange names (straight out of ancient Roman and Greek history and mythology), but they themselves seem a bit odd. René is a fellow resident, with ambitions in filmmaking, including a project to document the Golden family, but René hasn't decided if he should tell their true story or make up something fictional; either way, René can't seem to stay away from the Golden House.

#2 – See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt – the infamous Lizzie Borden was a woman that the public (but not a jury) believed murdered her father and stepmother with an axe. Since the science of forensics at the time was primitive at best, they found neither proof of Lizzie's guilt nor any other suspects. That means we will never know the whole truth. Using this mystery, Sarah Schmidt devises her own ideas about Lizzie Borden, her family and the murders, all of which she put into her dark and highly emotive debut novel.

#1 – The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce TIED with the novel Beartown by Fredrik Backman AND the novella The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman – last year, Backman’s novel and novella got demoted (after grabbing the first-place spots in 2014 and 2015) to the second-place spot, but both of his two works of this year left me breathless. However, Joyce’s fourth book had me bawling like a baby, so I couldn’t place her novel any lower on this list. UPDATE: I have decided that I must also include All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan as another book TIED for first place this year (although it was first published in Israel in 2014 in Hebrew, the English version only came out in 2017, so it does deserve to be here as well)!

NON-FICTION Award – Not Quite Lost: Travels without a Sense of Direction by Roz Morris – who would have thought that a self-published book would be so absolutely delightful, but this one certainly is just that. Morris, who is an accomplished ghost-writer, took the step to finally publish under her own name, and the world is better for it. This lovingly written diary takes us along Morris' many travels (mostly across Britain), where random entries in hotel or B&B guest books spark the imagination and become new adventures both thrilling and beautiful. Although I haven’t read her fiction (not really my thing, as they’re kinda fantasy/Sci-Fi books), if this little memoir is anything to go by, they must be wonderful.

That’s it for this year, and here's wishing everyone a 2018 filled with more amazing books. (Who knows, but maybe I'll need to make that list a "top ten" one!) You can find my previous lists here:

• 2013
• 2014
• 2015
• 2016

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Mysterious Models

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

“On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives at a grand house in Amsterdam to begin her new life as the wife of wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. Though curiously distant, he presents her with an extraordinary wedding give: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. it is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations ring eerily true. As Nella uncovers the secrets of her new household she realizes the escalating dangers they face. The miniaturist seems to hold their fate in her hands – but does she plan to save or destroy them?”

This alone would pique anyone’s interest, but to follow that with the opening lines of this book was what grabbed me and had me in thrall from start to finish. The book begins “The funeral is supposed to be a quiet affair, for the deceased had no friends. But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church’s east corner is crowded.” Okay, so you tell me if that doesn’t just blow you away? This simply sets an amazing tone with its poetry, that you might wonder if Burton can keep it up. Yet she does, and without it ever sounding overtly flowery or heavy. In fact, although these awe-inspiring turns of phrase pop up regularly throughout the text, for the most part, the language and style here is ultimately accessible and straight forward. Furthermore, Burton chooses her words carefully so that together with the plot, she builds an atmosphere that feels like this could easily be a memoir written in the late 17th century.

Now, rather than continue to be totally effusive and gushing about this novel, I’ll point out a few things that other reviewers might not touch on. For example, one thing that surprised me about this book is that there is a real-life cabinet house that sits in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was once owned by one Petronella Oortman (and there’s a picture of it included in the book). Apparently, this was the inspiration for Burton’s debut novel, which I think is fascinating. When people ask where writers get their inspiration, certainly this is proof that they can get it from practically anywhere, anyone and anything. Obviously, seeing this cabinet house spurred Burton so much that she ended up doing what feels like extensive research about the era and place, some of the findings of which she includes after the end of the book, with other information, among which also includes a small glossary and some guidelines for what things cost at the time. I found this a lovely touch, and it certainly put some things into perspective.

Another thing was the slightest hints of magical realism that Burton includes here. All of this surrounds the titular character, and that artisan’s peculiar talents. Not only can this miniaturist make breathtakingly accurate replicas of people, animals and inanimate objects, but these reproductions have an uncanny way of revealing things that no one outside of the Brandt house could possibly know, as well as indicate things that have not yet happened. Burton uses this magical realism to further the various twists and turns in the story, including Nella’s various attempts to contact the person responsible for these strange objects.

Essentially, what we have here is a simply lusciously written, inspired work of genius with a complex plot that Burton carefully unfolds while avoiding confusing the readers, and a cast of characters that are both human and endearing. What more can I say but kudos to Burton for this amazing work of historical fiction that deserves a full five out of five stars! 

PS: Had I read this book in 2014, it would certainly have been a front runner in that year’s list of my top five books of the year! Also, I see from IMDb that they’re making a mini-series of this book, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading it; no screen version could ever portray Burton’s truly stunningly beautiful prose.

Picador released "The Miniaturist" by Jessie Burton in 2014. This book is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo eBooks, Kobo audiobooks, eBooks.com, iTunes (iBook or audiobook), The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), new or used from Alibris or Better World Books (where your purchase supports literacy and libraries) as well as from an IndieBound store near you.

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