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In Depression-era Boston, a city divided by privilege and poverty, two unlikely friends are bound by a dangerous secret in this mesmerizing work of historical fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfume Collector. Maeve Fanning is a first generation Irish immigrant, born and raised among the poor, industrious Italian families of Boston's North End by her widowed mother. Clever, capable, and as headstrong as her red hair suggests, she's determined to better herself despite the overwhelming hardships of the Great Depression. However, Maeve also has a dangerous fondness for strange men and bootleg gin - a rebellious appetite that soon finds her spiraling downward, leading a double life. When the strain proves too much, Maeve becomes an unwilling patient in a psychiatric hospital, where she strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic young woman, who, like Maeve, is unable or unwilling to control her un-lady-like desire for freedom. Once out, Maeve faces starting over again. Armed with a bottle of bleach and a few white lies, she lands a job at an eccentric antiques shop catering to Boston's wealthiest and most peculiar collectors. Run by an elusive English archeologist, the shop is a haven of the obscure and incredible, providing rare artifacts as well as unique access to the world of America's social elite. While delivering a purchase to the wealthy Van der Laar family, Maeve is introduced to beautiful socialite Diana Van der Laar - only to discover she's the young woman from the hospital. Reunited with the charming but increasingly unstable Diana and pursued by her attractive brother James, Mae becomes more and more entwined with the Van der Laar family - a connection that pulls her into a world of moral ambiguity and deceit, and ultimately betrayal. Bewitched by their wealth and desperate to leave her past behind, Maeve is forced to unearth her true values and discover how far she'll to go to reinvent herself.… (más)
I didn't realize I was as far along in the book as I was :-) I felt like I had only just started it and then realized I was half way through.
The storyline and different aspects of the storyline is pretty amazing ... and then when the whole thing comes together ... you've fallen in love with the characters and it's just a beautiful thing :-)
Wonderful wonderful story and very well written! :-)
I picked this one up because the synopsis interested me for several reasons. First, it is set in the early thirties, and second, because it appeared to be an immigrant story. I also love the cover! Sadly, I didn’t love the book. I didn’t find the characters likeable, which is not really an issue most of the time. But more than not liking the characters, I just couldn’t make a connection with them. While I loved the cover, and enjoyed the descriptions of the lifestyles, I really did not care what happened to the characters. The story started off well enough, with Maeve getting a job in an antique shop. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the ‘finds’ and the stories that were built around them. But then the story began to drag. I am pretty sure that if I hadn’t committed to this review, I would have set the book aside. While it did pick up again at the end, and I ALMOST was happy for the resolution for Diana, it wasn’t enough for me to feel happy that I read the book.
While I did not enjoy the book, if you read through other reviews on the tour, you will find I am clearly in the minority! So please do read through the other reviews (the stops on the tour are listed below), especially if you have read and enjoyed Kathleen Tessaro in the past, before you decide whether or not this is a book you would enjoy!
This book review is included in a tour by TLC Book Tours. I was provided a copy for review purposes.( )
In Depression-era Boston, a city divided by privilege and poverty, two unlikely friends are bound by a dangerous secret in this mesmerizing work of historical fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfume Collector.
Maeve Fanning is a first generation Irish immigrant, born and raised among the poor, industrious Italian families of Boston’s North End by her widowed mother. Clever, capable, and as headstrong as her red hair suggests, she’s determined to better herself despite the overwhelming hardships of the Great Depression.
However, Maeve also has a dangerous fondness for strange men and bootleg gin—a rebellious appetite that soon finds her spiraling downward, leading a double life. When the strain proves too much, Maeve becomes an unwilling patient in a psychiatric hospital, where she strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic young woman, who, like Maeve, is unable or unwilling to control her un-lady-like desire for freedom.
Once out, Maeve faces starting over again. Armed with a bottle of bleach and a few white lies, she lands a job at an eccentric antiques shop catering to Boston’s wealthiest and most peculiar collectors. Run by an elusive English archeologist, the shop is a haven of the obscure and incredible, providing rare artifacts as well as unique access to the world of America’s social elite. While delivering a purchase to the wealthy Van der Laar family, Maeve is introduced to beautiful socialite Diana Van der Laar—only to discover she’s the young woman from the hospital.
Reunited with the charming but increasingly unstable Diana and pursued by her attractive brother James, Mae becomes more and more entwined with the Van der Laar family—a connection that pulls her into a world of moral ambiguity and deceit, and ultimately betrayal. Bewitched by their wealth and desperate to leave her past behind, Maeve is forced to unearth her true values and discover how far she’ll to go to reinvent herself. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
A man's character is his fate. HERACLITUS, FRAGMENTS
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
This book is dedicated to my dear friend ROBERT TROTTA, whose remarkable character has forever shaped the fate of my son for the better and given me proof time and again of true heroism in this world. I am beholden to you, sir.
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Looking back is a dangerous thing.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Aging does that; it makes you amenable to far more ambiguous feelings and opinions than the inflexible black-and-white thinking of youth.
James Van der Laar was like a disease, spreading through my mind and body, even in his absence. At night I lay in bed, imagining his hands on my skin, his body on mine. I might have been infected, dying even. But I didn't want to be cured.
The Italian saints were far too vivid for her liking—Saint Lucia holding her eyes on a little silver plate, or Saint Agatha offering her breasts like two splendid cakes on a gold tray.
For the Irish, Catholicism was a sacrifice, an open wound that brought persecution and hardship. But for the Italians, it was celebration.
He'd always been Michael Fanning, never father or Da. And he wasn't just a man but an era; the golden age in Ma's life, illuminated by optimism and possibility, gone before I was born. I'd grown up praying to him, begging for his guidance and mercy, imagining him always there, watching over me with those inquisitive, unblinking eyes. God the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and Michael Fanning. In my mind, the four of them sat around heaven, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, taking turns choosing the forecast for the day.
But Ma was never one to let a subject die an easy death if she could kick it around the room a few more times.
Now here I was, on a street I'd never even been down before, in my counterfeit coat and curls.
"But for the buyer, he's fitting another intricate piece into a carefully curated world of his own construction. At its root is an ancient belief, a hope, in the magic of objects. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, we still search for alchemy."
I couldn't bear to look upon the satisfaction in my mother's face any more than I could stand to stare too long at the sun.
Action is key; in motion, we are all of us magnificent. So there you have it. If the world were good, Miss Fanning, it wouldn't be interesting. But in my experience, when it's real, it's very interesting indeed.
"And so we have to suffer," I concluded. Talking with him was like being tossed into a dangerous, fast-moving current; one had to swim hard against the unrelenting tide of his arguments. "Yes! Absolutely! Don't you see? Our souls are forged in adversity. Without it, we're shapeless, indistinct! Suffering isn't punishment, it's a catalyst!" He began to pace the floor, as if he were pulling ideas from the air around him. "Why, a man might think himself capable of anything when life is calm, might imagine himself equal to great sacrifice, dignity, or courage. But only in our desperate moments do we truly know what we're made of or who we are. The hour of our calamity is the only true test of our character—without it we're unformed and incomplete!" "And what if the hour of our calamity is our last?" I countered. (Apparently I had just as many philosophical opinions as he did, which surprised me.) Quite suddenly he stopped pacing. "Now there's a question," he admitted. Some inner shadow darkened his fervor. "Then we die," he said quietly. "But we die having truly lived. And nothing can diminish that."
"You know me." Mr. Winshaw shrugged. "I prefer useless friends."
There was sanity in our madness together that I couldn't find with anyone else.
Now, as I took a seat across from him, I could feel his concern and disappointment like a low-hanging dark cloud.
Father Grady had years of practice in waiting behind him. He knew, perhaps better than any man in Boston, the art of silence. In a congregation full of first- and second-generation Irish immigrants, people uniquely skilled in the lavish use of language, he'd learned to navigate all manner of domestic, political, and spiritual crises by carefully rationing his words. He knew better than to argue, debate, cajole, or sympathize; any conversation was likely to muddy the waters of clear, calm reflection. Quiet unnerved his people, disarmed them. It forced them into that uncomfortable empty space where only God would go and where humor, charm, and intellect were of no use.
The door closed, and the sounds of the playground, the universal echo of childhood, faded behind me.
Life was quiet and uneventful, temporarily suspended, like an intermission between acts.
But I didn't expand, so he didn't pursue the point. Instead he accepted the change with the same grave attitude with which he accepted most good things in his life: as divine gifts that were diminished or even removed when questioned.
So I kept to a strict daily schedule, just as he prescribed. I woke, ate, and went to bed at the same times, exercised by walking briskly, and practiced the daily relaxation methods he'd taught me. Underneath, however, my head churned, soaring between giddy anticipation and depression. "You must remain positive," Mr. Baylor advised. "Do something physical when the urge strikes—clean the oven, iron, scrub the floor." One of the benefits of my "Episcopalian regime" (as my mother put it) was that the apartment was always spotless.
"Refocus your mind!" Mr. Baylor had urged with his trademark emphatic energy. "Life isn't going to fall into your lap, Miss Fanning. Go on! Try something new!"
I began to develop an eye and an appreciation for where I was and what I was doing.
"I'm better now. Much better than I was. It's going to work this time, I know." Her determination made her seem all the more fragile.
"Yes, I'll think about it. I promise." She removed her hand carefully, as if the physical contact were dangerous, possibly even painful.
"When you're real, you feel real," he clarified. "And when you're not, you feel see-through, like a piece of glass."
Then I saw Mickey through the crowd, standing with his arm around Hildy. He was laughing. For years, I'd assumed that he could only be happy with me.
So I ran, as a child runs from a gang of kids from another neighborhood, terrified and desperate.
"Stop meddling!" Mr. Kessler called from his office. "You're going to talk us out of a perfectly good salesgirl!" "Yes, but what if she's not a salesgirl? What about your ambitions and interests? What your aspirations?" "My aspirations are to pay the rent. As for interests, I honestly wouldn't know."
"Mama! Just look at her flowers!" "Yes." She nodded. "Either someone's been very naughty, or they're about to be."
"After all, the family is what matters! The family tells you everything you need to know about the person. The family is what is left after the roses fade."
"When you meet a man, you have to think, not just feel. Where they come from, where they're going, what they believe in..."
"Luck?" she snorted. "Luck is for gamblers and fools! You make a choice!"
"Because happiness isn't made of fun. It's made of solid, real things. It's made of paychecks and clean clothing, and hot food and healthy children, and a man who can look you in the eye when he comes home because he has nothing to hide. It's not so rare. In fact, it's so common people don't notice it. They look for roses when they should be looking for indoor plumbing."
Ma, on the other hand, was thrilled about the bouquet. She couldn't have been more delighted if they'd been given to her.
This wasn't my world; I'd been admitted by mistake. Any minute now they would discover I was a fraud and show me to the door.
I was alone in the shop one morning when a gentleman came in, dressed in a boldly fashionable blue seersucker suit and lavender tie. His straw boater was tilted at a rakish angle, and he moved with a certain barely contained energy, as if he might burst into dance at any moment. His eyes were lively and sharp, his mouth curved automatically into a smile, as if he were forever enjoying some private joke.
"Sometimes, my dear, being broken is the most interesting thing that can happen."
I stared after her, cut adrift in a sea of tulle and taffeta, alone and out of place.
"Don't be seduced by the tinsel and the lights. You're worth more than that."
Occasionally a vague political opinion was tossed into the arena; it fell like a cigarette butt onto the ground, smoldering only a little before being crushed out.
No one asked me who I was or where I'd come from; on Nicky's arm I blended into the fabric of their world seamlessly.
The summer that had been at first such a relief was now a sentence to be endured.
The air in the shop was heavy and still, smelling of centuries. Outside, people pushed through invisible membranes of humidity and lethargy. It was a morbid, narcotic heat, the kind that presses against the skin and weighs down thought, making children teary and adults bad-tempered.
I began to talk, about James and Diana; about the apartment; even about the hospital and Mr. Baylor; about everything that had been pressing in, crushing me. It came out sloppily and unchecked, like a handbag tossed on the ground, private contents spilling out in all directions.
Instead he stared at his shadow in the glow of the streetlamp as it stretched far beyond the limits of his natural form, reaching out to touch the darkness around us.
I got home just as the early dawn light began to bleed into the night sky.
The full weight of my accumulated lies and betrayals settled upon me.
The whole experience was like being caught in a sudden violent tempest that, now spent, left only a calm and placid sea.
The world was full of collectors, scouring the earth for pieces of themselves.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
TO THE MERMAID OF BOSTON HARBOR FROM A DROWNING MAN
In Depression-era Boston, a city divided by privilege and poverty, two unlikely friends are bound by a dangerous secret in this mesmerizing work of historical fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfume Collector. Maeve Fanning is a first generation Irish immigrant, born and raised among the poor, industrious Italian families of Boston's North End by her widowed mother. Clever, capable, and as headstrong as her red hair suggests, she's determined to better herself despite the overwhelming hardships of the Great Depression. However, Maeve also has a dangerous fondness for strange men and bootleg gin - a rebellious appetite that soon finds her spiraling downward, leading a double life. When the strain proves too much, Maeve becomes an unwilling patient in a psychiatric hospital, where she strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic young woman, who, like Maeve, is unable or unwilling to control her un-lady-like desire for freedom. Once out, Maeve faces starting over again. Armed with a bottle of bleach and a few white lies, she lands a job at an eccentric antiques shop catering to Boston's wealthiest and most peculiar collectors. Run by an elusive English archeologist, the shop is a haven of the obscure and incredible, providing rare artifacts as well as unique access to the world of America's social elite. While delivering a purchase to the wealthy Van der Laar family, Maeve is introduced to beautiful socialite Diana Van der Laar - only to discover she's the young woman from the hospital. Reunited with the charming but increasingly unstable Diana and pursued by her attractive brother James, Mae becomes more and more entwined with the Van der Laar family - a connection that pulls her into a world of moral ambiguity and deceit, and ultimately betrayal. Bewitched by their wealth and desperate to leave her past behind, Maeve is forced to unearth her true values and discover how far she'll to go to reinvent herself.
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