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Maude McDaniel

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Stolen innocence

Review by Maude McDaniel

Working just a smidgeon outside the law, Casey Woods’ crew of experts, “Forensic Instincts,” tackles the daunting case of a kidnapped kindergartener, Krissy, in Andrea Kane’s The Girl Who Disappeared Twice. Years before, Krissy’s six-year-old aunt was also kidnapped—and never heard from again. Now Krissy’s mother, family court judge Hope Willis, desperately seeks help, official or otherwise, to locate her missing daughter.

FI tackles the job with all the esprit that comes naturally to a psychologist, an almost-super-skilled techno-savant and a former Navy SEAL (not to mention Hero the bloodhound). Assembling the disparate facts of Krissy’s disappearance, they form a picture that confronts the guilty, satisfies the romantic and brings a gratifying answer to the whole puzzle.

Known for her ability to seamlessly combine the emotional and technical threads of her stories, Kane succeeds once again with The Girl Who Disappeared Twice.  

Working just a smidgeon outside the law, Casey Woods’ crew of experts, “Forensic Instincts,” tackles the daunting case of a kidnapped kindergartener, Krissy, in Andrea Kane’s The Girl Who Disappeared Twice. Years before, Krissy’s six-year-old aunt was also kidnapped—and never heard from again. Now Krissy’s mother, family court judge Hope Willis, desperately seeks help, official […]
Fiction

Mystery and mayhem in the Chicago suburbs

Review by Maude McDaniel

When Mia and Mac start receiving threatening graffiti messages from a neighborhood gang, they decide it might be a good idea to move out to the Chicago suburbs. Fortified by Mia’s successful career as a novelist (her series of Amish-zombie-teen romances, with titles like It’s Raining Mennonites, turn out to be a big hit), the couple can’t resist a house made famous by the 1980s movies of Mia’s idol, filmmaker John Hughes. So Mia and Mac buy the house and move in right away. That’s their first mistake.

Unfortunately, their new home comes fully equipped with numerous colonies of carpenter ants, a collapsing floor, non-working bathrooms, highly penetrable walls, doors that swell when painted and repellent neighbors. And their marriage starts to show the strain when Mac turns out not to be quite the handyman he fancies himself, and Mia’s Polish aunt, Babcia, becomes a direct threat to the neighborhood’s ornamental cabbages. Finding reliable contractors becomes almost impossible, what with members of the mob, dogfighters and secret revolutionaries among the candidates. All of this is not to mention a secretive, mysterious enemy working against Mia and Mac behind the scenes.

Jen Lancaster is a New York Times best-selling author of five memoirs based on her popular blog, jennsylvania.com. Spontaneous as any blog, her first novel boasts 174 footnotes—but its resemblance to an erudite think-piece stops there. With quirky, contemporary language (“That’s just covered in awesome sauce”), If You Were Here will eventually overcome most readers’ caveats with its protagonist’s good heart and creative plot progressions. It takes some getting used to, but this whimsical, funny novel of DIY gone awry will win over even the most skeptical reader.

 

When Mia and Mac start receiving threatening graffiti messages from a neighborhood gang, they decide it might be a good idea to move out to the Chicago suburbs. Fortified by Mia’s successful career as a novelist (her series of Amish-zombie-teen romances, with titles like It’s Raining Mennonites, turn out to be a big hit), the […]
FictionWomen's Fiction

Binchy’s best novel yet

Review by Maude McDaniel

Maeve Binchy has done it again. In Minding Frankie, she assembles a large cast of characters (many of them familiar faces from the close-knit Dublin neighborhood last depicted in Heart and Soul) and deploys them with her characteristic playfulness, effortlessly forming yet another warm tale of individual growth and human community.

Binchy writes about a baby girl born to a dying mother, who names the exact right person among her acquaintances to raise little Frances before she dies. That would be Noel Lynch, a victim of advanced apathy concerning just about everything in his life, which is further complicated by alcoholism. He could indeed be Frankie’s father, but it takes all of dying Stella’s determination to start things in the right direction, and before the story is done, the whole neighborhood bands together to see things done right by Frankie.

Binchy mourns the loss of community in the town, but a desire to work together seems alive and well as the neighbors gather ’round to care for Frankie—and to foil Moira, the rather nasty social worker who threatens to upset the carefully planned arrangements.

Even minor characters feel the jab of Binchy’s wit, like Miss Gorman, a secretary “who had a disapproval rating about almost everything,” and the Italian restaurant owner, who speaks in “carefully maintained broken English.” Ireland may not be what it used to be, but Binchy viably populates a modern version that is almost as heartwarming.

Binchy specializes in exploring human foibles without spelling them out in tiresome detail. Here she adds a 19th novel to a string of successes that take light-hearted looks at real life and always find it worth the effort. There’s a good chance that many readers, like this one, will consider Minding Frankie one of Binchy’s best novels yet. 

Maeve Binchy has done it again. In Minding Frankie, she assembles a large cast of characters (many of them familiar faces from the close-knit Dublin neighborhood last depicted in Heart and Soul) and deploys them with her characteristic playfulness, effortlessly forming yet another warm tale of individual growth and human community. Binchy writes about a […]
FictionWomen's FictionDebut Fiction

Home, not-so-sweet, home

Review by Maude McDaniel

There is one thing you can be sure of in Nicolle Wallace’s debut novel: Every background detail and procedural item is accurate to the very last degree. Wallace didn’t have to interview anyone but herself about internal operations within the 18 acres of the title—that is, the White House. As a former White House Communications Director (under George W. Bush), as well as a campaign advisor for John McCain and Sarah Palin, she has pretty much been there and known that.

Wisely, though, she doesn’t push the protocol. This story instead covers the private lives of three women: the first female president, Charlotte Kramer; her White House chief of staff, Melanie Kingston; and Dale Smith, White House correspondent. Ambushed like all presidents by the sometimes murky details of other people’s lives and intentions, Charlotte struggles to bring her first term to a fitting close with the hope of running again. She gets no help at all from her husband, Peter, whose affair with Dale becomes public just in time to complicate the whole situation. A debatable emergency decision by Defense Secretary Roger Taylor thrusts all three women into the limelight at an unfortunate time, when Charlotte is making important choices for the next four years. This would include her selection of Palin-esque Democrat Tara Meyers as her new vice president, to head a startling, two-party Unity ticket.

The plot gets a little convoluted at the end, and some readers may feel that in places it supports the accusation that a woman in the White House might be more destructively emotional than a man. On the other hand, Eighteen Acres dares to probe the personal relationships that affect every campaign, even if some men pretend to ignore them. The emphasis on private issues makes the reader feel like a mouse in the House (albeit a female mouse) witnessing a variety of political human dynamics that don’t get much attention publicly, except at their most scandalous.

At any rate, Eighteen Acres raises questions we might not have thought about before. Nicolle Wallace neatly melds the political and personal facets of public life to produce an absorbing suggestion of future possibilities in the American presidency in this absorbing novel.

 

There is one thing you can be sure of in Nicolle Wallace’s debut novel: Every background detail and procedural item is accurate to the very last degree. Wallace didn’t have to interview anyone but herself about internal operations within the 18 acres of the title—that is, the White House. As a former White House Communications […]
Fiction

A touching father-daughter journey

Review by Maude McDaniel

In Japan, there is an old tradition of writing wishes or prayers on pieces of paper and tying them to “wish trees,” so that they might come true. When Ian’s wife Kate dies, she leaves behind a letter urging Ian and their 10-year-old daughter, Mattie, to retrace the route of a memorable trip through Asia that the two adults had taken some 15 years before. She leaves notes behind for both, to be opened when they arrive in each of the six Asian countries that she and Ian had planned to revisit someday: Japan, Nepal, Thailand, India, Hong Kong and Vietnam. And Kate asks that they write letters to her and tie them to trees throughout their Eastern journey.

The author of three other unpredictably ranging novels, John Shors has made himself a reputation for recreating exotic landscapes that surround heartwarming stories with captivating details. The Wishing Trees is no exception, as he replaces what might be a standard tale of recovery from loss with an alluring travelogue, filled with colorful details of these chromatic countries. (The Taj Mahal, for instance, built “when architecture was spiritual in nature,” actually “seem[ed] to glow from within,” appearing “almost like a mirage in the desert . . . too perfect and pristine to rest on the same soil as the shops outside.”)

In each stop on their journey, Ian and Mattie find people, situations and settings that turn their thoughts inevitably toward others more than themselves. And Mattie, who has a talent for drawing, leaves letters for her mother with pictures and notes of longing and love on the tallest trees of every country, which eventually helps to turn her, and her father, away from the past and into a future filled with healing, as well as memories.

In Japan, there is an old tradition of writing wishes or prayers on pieces of paper and tying them to “wish trees,” so that they might come true. When Ian’s wife Kate dies, she leaves behind a letter urging Ian and their 10-year-old daughter, Mattie, to retrace the route of a memorable trip through Asia […]
Fiction

The problematic life of a polygamist’s wife

Review by Maude McDaniel

Some choose hobbits, some choose Harry Potter, but the most interesting of all fantastical cultures to read about may be the ones that actually exist—across deserts or oceans or continents. In The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, the title character’s family (to this American reader, at least) is a good example of the possibilities of strangeness that abound in the real world.

Baba Segi, rather endearing with all his boastfulness and digestive problems, is a Nigerian businessman who sells construction materials and prides himself on his four wives and seven children. Greedy Iya Segi, timid Iya Tope and malicious Iya Femi, all known only in reference to their oldest children, have been married to Baba for many years, and they are not happy when he brings home his fourth wife, Bolande—who is, startlingly, a university graduate. This prestige complicates her life, not just doubling the wives’ resentment but also restricting her husband’s options when it comes to discipline. (As an acquaintance asks, “Who would dare to drag a graduate” by her hair?)

After two years of marriage, Bolande still has secrets, but she is not the only one. Each of the other wives, speaking unmistakably in separate chapters but without formal identification, reveals that not a one is exactly as she presents herself. Though he does not know it at the time, neither is Baba Segi. When Iya Segi finally takes action to deal with the interloper, all goes tragically wrong, and the lesson learned too late for this generation is passed on to the oldest son: “Take one wife and one wife alone.”

Lola Shoneyin lived in Scotland as a teenager, returning to her home country to teach English and drama. She was a fellow of the Iowa International Writer’s Program and has published both poetry and fiction. Her message in this book is clear: In the end, polygamy in Nigeria, and no doubt elsewhere, is a tricky row to hoe.

Some choose hobbits, some choose Harry Potter, but the most interesting of all fantastical cultures to read about may be the ones that actually exist—across deserts or oceans or continents. In The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, the title character’s family (to this American reader, at least) is a good example of the possibilities […]
Memoir

A hero reflects on life’s lessons

Review by Maude McDaniel

This is exactly the kind of book you would expect the now-legendary Sully Sullenberger to write. In his memoir, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, which set down so memorably on the Hudson River in January, is earnest, controlled and exacting. Sullenberger is not prone to flights of fancy—in fact, he is the very pilot you’d choose for the job if you had any say in it. His book reflects the same qualities.

For someone who has spent so much time in the air (he’s been flying for 42 of his 58 years), Sully is remarkably down-to-earth. This memoir covers a wide array of issues, from certain practical aspects of airline price-cutting (it cuts corners on the kind of pilot experience that gives depth of skill) to a rueful assessment of his own healthy sense of self (“regimented, demanding of myself and others—a perfectionist”).

He alternates thoughtful accounts of family dynamics with a career overview, including seven years in military service after graduation from the Air Force Academy and a stint at Purdue in a master’s program that enabled him “to understand the why as well as the how” of the world. Throughout, Sully selects just the right anecdotes to convey both his love for his family and his practical approach to life, all rounded out by his endearing appreciation for the elements of flying that cannot be pinned down.

Eventually Sully gets around to the defining incident of his life that catapulted him into the spotlight and arrives at something millions have suspected ever since those riveting pictures of the downed plane and its passengers first appeared on our TV screens: “Technology is no substitute for experience, skill and judgment.” Readers will know how it all turns out, but the details are engrossing.

The world will never return to its former state, but life has been renewed for Sully as it has for each of the other 154 passengers on Flight 1549. His “search for what really matters” appears to have arrived at family and flying, but subtly includes the encompassing qualities that discerning persons discover in the course of a lifetime. Like the best pilots, Sully just got there a little early.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

This is exactly the kind of book you would expect the now-legendary Sully Sullenberger to write. In his memoir, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, which set down so memorably on the Hudson River in January, is earnest, controlled and exacting. Sullenberger is not prone to flights of fancy—in fact, he is the very […]
Memoir

Drabble contemplates the puzzle of life

Review by Maude McDaniel

Margaret Drabble is the dean of English fiction writers, with some 17 novels and two biographies on record, not to mention having served as editor of two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her latest book is an eccentric foray into personal and public history, an examination of the rich and intricate interchange between cultural artifacts and the people from whom they spring: children’s games, old houses, family relationships, Italian ceilings, art, aging, the “half-arts” (crafts) and the relatives with whom she shared them. (Or not.)

The Pattern in the Carpet, which the author insists is not a memoir, combines the appeal of one’s childish occupations—and the personal memories that surround them—with an adult’s curiosity about their origins. Having recently renounced writing fiction, Drabble here draws instead on many disparate facets of her life. She does it sometimes briskly, sometimes enigmatically, always inventively.

Jigsaw puzzles, one “way of getting quietly through life until death,” are Drabble’s first love, and a perfect allegory for the baffling parts of life that never quite seem to fit together until their time comes. Surprisingly, they were invented as early as the 1700s. Jigsaws went through several historical changes, from “dissected maps” at the start to super-sophisticated Jackson Pollocks in the 1960s.

Those are just a few tidbits of the history Drabble recounts here, but the personal touch is never far behind. Auntie Phyl, her trusty jigsaw puzzle partner, and other family members (including her estranged sister and fellow novelist A.S. Byatt) make appearances, adding a human element.

Despite the author’s disclaimers, this quirky book shares many qualities with the memoir. Without the memories of the people in her life who used them, a hopscotch history of the incredible world of human time-killers that existed before TV and the Internet might have been arid and lifeless. But read it fast; many of these games and occupations may be gone before you next look up from the page.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

Margaret Drabble is the dean of English fiction writers, with some 17 novels and two biographies on record, not to mention having served as editor of two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her latest book is an eccentric foray into personal and public history, an examination of the rich and intricate interchange […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

A boy and his elephant

Review by Maude McDaniel

Admittedly, 12-year-old Tom Page is no Gulliver, but he’s way ahead of his time (late 18th-century England) in his belief that animals and humans can interact with respect—and even love—on both sides. So it is fortuitous that Tom’s sugar-merchant master puts him in charge of two Indian elephants, delivered on British soil as exotic curiosities and almost dead after a long journey by ship with little food or care.

In Christopher Nicholson’s remarkable debut, The Elephant Keeper, Tom nurses the elephants back to life. He names them Jenny and Timothy, and together, the three of them bond on the palatial estate of a wealthy local man. Later, the kindly Lord Bidborough buys Jenny, but Timothy, whose hormones often render him fairly uncontrollable, is sold away. Tom, now 17, accompanies Jenny, and the two of them live the best years of their lives together at Lord Bidborough’s Sussex manor. Lord Bidborough suggests that Tom write a “history of the elephant” and doubtfully Tom starts “a simple account of particulars.” Gaining confidence, he launches into a joint biography/autobiography so engaging that at least one reviewer kept forgetting to make notes and simply charged ahead to find out what happens next.

First-time novelist Nicholson has produced many programs for BBC World Service about animals and humans. Here he does justice to both, establishing an unexpected venue of British aristocratic whimsy, along with an unforgettable picture of an elephant/human relationship so close that, as the elephant learns to think like a human, she teaches her human to think like an elephant, too.

After a Bidborough heir returns home, things deteriorate fast. In the end, a clever abandonment of literal storytelling succeeds in persuading the reader that, against all odds, Jenny and Tom survive into health and happiness together. This is one of the best books of the year, and “the crinkled line of writing on the distant horizon” promises a bittersweet ending that eases the heart, though it may boggle the mind.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

Admittedly, 12-year-old Tom Page is no Gulliver, but he’s way ahead of his time (late 18th-century England) in his belief that animals and humans can interact with respect—and even love—on both sides. So it is fortuitous that Tom’s sugar-merchant master puts him in charge of two Indian elephants, delivered on British soil as exotic curiosities […]
FictionWorld Fiction

Hong Kong in the wake of war

Review by Maude McDaniel

Claire married Martin because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Later, after they moved from England to Hong Kong in 1951, "there had been times when [she] felt that she could become a different person." Still, "the elasticity of her possibility diminished over time" until she met Will, emotionally damaged from earlier experiences, but still able to help her get "out of context."

In the course of Janice Y.K. Lee's exceptional first novel, Claire (the eponymous piano teacher) eventually lands at the far end of the arc of independence she hadn't realized she'd been following from the beginning. Certainly, if one is to do one's own thing, Hong Kong, with its population of rebels and fawners, is the place for it. On the other hand (except perhaps for poor Martin), the other residents all have longer histories of machinations and personal betrayals—how could it be otherwise given the last 10 years of this city's history, the first five of which were spent in trying to survive the brutal Japanese occupation, and the last five in trying to forget it?

The Piano Teacher is split into two alternating narratives: one detailing Will's affair during World War II with the haunting Eurasian beauty Trudy (who dominates the pages during her tenure), and the other exploring his affair with Claire a decade later. This book is well worth reading if only for its pitch-perfect portrayal of a ruthlessly brittle society, so destroyed in the 1940s and revived in the '50s. The moral ambiguities and secrets of citizens and expatriates alike float or sink as they deal (and make deals) with their occupiers.

Lee was herself born and raised in Hong Kong and educated at Harvard. A former editor at Elle and Mirabella magazines, she now lives once more in that extravagant city. Here, Lee has produced a powerful treatment of a precarious place where deceit and betrayal and their consequences are not confined to the war years. And where sometimes, it must seem, the last and best resort is to hunker down and curl up in a ball, to "dissolve into [Hong Kong], be absorbed in its rhythms and become, easily, a part of the world."

For better or for worse.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland. 

Claire married Martin because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Later, after they moved from England to Hong Kong in 1951, "there had been times when [she] felt that she could become a different person." Still, "the elasticity of her possibility diminished over time" until she met Will, emotionally damaged from earlier […]
Fiction

Binchy’s tale of everyday life has heart

Review by Maude McDaniel

Today’s brave new literary culture seems to demand oddballs, preferably super ones. They can be benign oddballs, like Harry Potter, or dark ones (the vampire of your choice), but real people are somewhat out of fashion these days. Nevertheless, a brave coterie of writers, like Irish stalwart Maeve Binchy here in Heart and Soul, insists against all odds on telling readers that ordinary folks still exist.

St. Brigid’s Heart Clinic is based in a white elephant section of Dublin, and the hospital head honcho aches to convert the site to good money. Unfortunately for him, new director Clara Casey doggedly assembles an excellent staff to run the place. In true Binchyan fashion, each of the new employees has a story of his/her own, a technique that turns run-of-the-mill personalities into memorable, one-of-a-kind individuals.

Chief among them is the little Polish immigrant, Ania, who has more personal history than anyone suspects, but repudiates it in her new country. Then there is the nice heart doctor, Declan, who falls in love with the beautiful nurse, Fiona, and has a terrible accident. There are heart patient Bobby and his malicious wife; Eileen, who is not what she seems; and Brian, the local priest who attracts her unwanted attentions. Not to mention various callow offspring and a whole host of other characters whose stories braid together until the direction of each new twist depends on the ones around it.

The author has written 14 other heartwarming novels about such ordinary people, not an accomplishment that will win her many literary prizes in our time. Her notable storytelling skills are taken for granted, and her subversive humor, based on situations more than repartee—the kind that makes the reader look up and grin as it sinks in—often goes unappreciated.

Nevertheless, as Binchy’s fiction sometimes points out, we often regret the things we don’t do. My recommendation, then: rein in your taste for spectacle and read this book about real human beings.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

Today’s brave new literary culture seems to demand oddballs, preferably super ones. They can be benign oddballs, like Harry Potter, or dark ones (the vampire of your choice), but real people are somewhat out of fashion these days. Nevertheless, a brave coterie of writers, like Irish stalwart Maeve Binchy here in Heart and Soul, insists […]
Fiction

Redeeming an ancient sin

Review by Maude McDaniel

As clients of the Moulton Foundation for which Lindy Caton works, Ulwa, Adhah and Seelah are ancient and mysterious crones indeed, considered gypsies by many in Acheron (pronounced Ash Run), Louisiana. Early on, Lindy realizes that the almost helpless Ulwa is, well, actually Eve, of Eden fame, and that her two sidekicks have accompanied her down through the ages to assist her in her unknown fate. Mainly this appears to be a rock – hard resistance to the eternal blandishments of Cain, who also has survived through five millennia, pursuing his mother, once even saving her in the Flood, when Noah wouldn't.

A remarkable first novel, Cain's Version is a mysterious retelling of the time when humankind left animal instinct behind and took on responsibility for their own actions. As told here, God is mostly absent, and Adam only a little less so. These authorial choices sometimes reduce the drama to little more than cosmic cases of a perdurable Oedipal complex and sibling rivalry. In demanding his mother's love back, Cain calls for a change of mind that is more than the addled old woman can offer. In the process, he recommits (upon a surrogate Abel) the murder that caused all the trouble in the first place – and with no more guilt about it.

Lindy, the 21st – century anchor to the drama, has recently moved to Acheron to be near her elderly father. She still has issues with her own mother, who deserted the family for a lover. The emotional impact of her father's death and the reappearance of her ex – husband perhaps account for her over – ready acceptance of this magically realistic state of affairs.

Frank Durham is a retired Tulane University physics professor who honed his writing at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Invocation of the "singing of the story," and "the world beyond here and beside now" lends his debut novel the requisite mythical atmosphere, and an environmental jolt at the end adds relevance. One of "the tribe of tellers," Durham comes up with the occasional shot of undeniable truth ("You know how much like hope a dream can be."). And that's really all a reader can demand of an author.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.

As clients of the Moulton Foundation for which Lindy Caton works, Ulwa, Adhah and Seelah are ancient and mysterious crones indeed, considered gypsies by many in Acheron (pronounced Ash Run), Louisiana. Early on, Lindy realizes that the almost helpless Ulwa is, well, actually Eve, of Eden fame, and that her two sidekicks have accompanied her […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Review by Maude McDaniel

For sheer enjoyment, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of the best books of the year. This quirky title brings with it a quirky novel that, if the world is fair, will appear on summer bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Looking around for new inspiration for her books in 1946, English author Juliet Ashton finds it in letters she receives from inhabitants of the Channel Island of Guernsey. They write seeking her help in literary matters, and, incidentally, telling of their remarkable history as a German possession during World War II. As an epistolary novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society captures the immediacy of the Guernsey Islanders’ experience during the German occupation in a way that arguably could not have been expressed otherwise.

Surprisingly, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was begun by an American book editor and bookseller, Mary Ann Shaffer, who found herself fascinated by Channel Island history. After she became ill, and later died, her niece, children’s book author Annie Barrows, completed the novel.

Besides revealing that the British postal system is apparently much faster than our own (letters and their answers are sometimes dated the same day!), this maze of interactive letter writers sheds reflective light on each other and their literary society, which was formed spontaneously to protect Islanders from Nazi retribution. Beyond that, one learns more serious lessons, including the variant results of war on different societies. (Americans, even after the War, are seen as relatively “un-mangled by it.”) Despite this book’s American provenance, its wit bears all the earmarks of the sly and whimsical English take on life, which is not just colorful here, but prismatic.

For some readers, grinning may be optional throughout this book. For many of us, however, despite some serious subject matter, it is unavoidable. “Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books,” says one letter writer, so be forewarned: your level of tolerance may be lowered by this delightful, unforgettable novel.

Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books," says one letter writer, so be forewarned: your level of tolerance may be lowered by this delightful, unforgettable novel.

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