Twisted Tales: Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller and Siracusa by Delia Ephron

On Halloween, I started Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller. It was described as atmospheric and was compared to Daphne du Maurier's classic Gothic romance/psychological thriller Rebecca.

I had to set the novel aside for a day because I was having trouble with my vision. Meanwhile, we took a trip across state and while driving we listened to the audiobook Siracusa by Delia Ephron. I have been waiting for this chance to listen to it ever since I won the audiobook from First Look Book Club several years ago!

The novel is told in four voices so an audiobook was a terrific way to 'read' the book. Talia Balsam, Katie Finneran, Darren Goldstein, and John Slattery were the readers. They did a great job! Each character was distinct in personality.

Two couples take a joint vacation trip to Italy including Siracusa. New Yorkers Michael (a Pulitzer-winning playwright) and Lizzie (a magazine writer) and Taylor and Finn, Lizzie's ex-boyfriend who runs a restaurant in Portland, Maine, and their beautiful and strange daughter Snow.

The relationships are revealed to all be troubled. Taylor has boundary issues with her daughter and has frozen Finn out. Michael is a natural charmer (and womanizer) whose attention to Snow results in a crush. Lizzie loves Michael but feels he is married to his work.

Creepy! Addictive! And I had to laugh out loud as these characters reveal their pettiness and limited self-understanding and lack of understanding of their partners. The foreshadowing was quite strong and we had a hunch about the ending, which turned out to be on target and quite shocking.

But what a perfect book for an eight-hour car trip across back country roads and expressways in November. It was entertaining and had us discussing the characters and plot.

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller 

Back home, I picked up Bitter Orange again. I ended up reading half the book in one evening. Yes, I stayed up too late but had to finish it.

On her deathbed, Frances Jellico believes she is being pressured by a Vicar to tell the truth of what really happened over a hot summer in 1969 when she was hired to evaluate the gardens of a crumbling 1740s c. English country house.

At thirty-nine. Frances had led a narrow life caring for her incapacitated, critical, and recently deceased mother. Grateful for the work, Frances arrived at the house to discover a man about her age and a younger women already staying there. Peter was hired to evaluate the house and furnishings. His companion Cara is beautiful and emotionally unstable. Frances is curious about their lives.

"I know of course right from wrong. My father, Luther Jellico, had instilled it into me before he left and then Mother had continued in her way: payment will always be due for any wrongdoing, don't lie or steal, don't talk to strange men, don't speak unless spoken to, don't look your mother in the eye, don't drink, don't smoke, don't expect anything from life." from Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

The house showed abuse and destruction from the soldiers stationed there during WWII, rooms empty and everything in disrepair. Strange things happen in the house, including the interactions between a protective Peter and volatile Cara.

Peter and Cara draw Frances into their carefree existence, setting aside their work for picnics with wine and smoking cigarettes and even a nude swim. Cara tells Frances her tragic story while Peter asks Frances to help him keep tabs on the mercurial Cara.

The local Vicar warns Frances to escape their influence.

It is too late, for these people are caught in a web of lies and fantasy that unravels with fatal consequences.  And Frances accepts that "Payment will always be due."

Read an article by Fuller on Haunted Houses in fiction at
https://clairefuller.co.uk/2018/10/31/a-spine-tingling-reading-list-of-haunted-house-novels/

Recipes From My Mother-in-Law: Pies

My mother-in-law Laura Grace O'Dell Bekofske prided herself on her cooking and baking skills. When we came to visit she always had cookies in a jar and pies cooling and often had baked rolls.

Laura and Herman Bekofske. The Christmas Cactus was in Laura's family for 100 years

When Laura died my husband kept her recipe book.

The binder was covered in contact paper, perhaps in the 1970s judging by the print.

The pages are stained and tattered. She included typed and handwritten recipes and clippings from newspapers and magazines, and booklets of recipes.

It always amazed me that all this cooking and baking was carried on in a small galley kitchen with very little counter space, a small wall oven, and a stovetop with only a sliver of counter between them. No dishwasher, either!

 When her youngest was in school she took a job cooking in the Grand Blanc high school kitchen.

Laura gave me the recipe for her Never Fail Pie Crust soon after I was part of the family. I have never had a problem making pies! Here is the recipe as she wrote it:

Never Fail Pie Crust

3 c flour
1 1/2 c shortening
1 tsp salt
1 egg well beaten
5 TB water
1 TB vinegar

This makes five pie crusts for a 10" pie.

Here are some of Laura's pie recipes.

Pecan Pie
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 TB flour
1/4 tp salt
1/4 c melted butter
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
3 large eggs
3/4 cup pecan halves

Beat together with rotary mixer sugar, flour, salt, butter, corn syrup, and eggs. Mix in pecan halves. Put into pastry-lined pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes until set and pastry is nicely browned. Spread on top of apples and bake at 400 degrees.

Fruit Pie
Laura noted this recipe came from her niece Harriet Marie O'Dell Beardslee Gregson

1 1/2 cup sugar
3 TB flour
1 1/2 c rhubarb
1 1/2 cup cranberries, halved
1 1/2 cup apples, chopped
Place into pastry in pie pan. Bake 40-45 minutes at 450 degrees

$50 Apple Pie

Spray pie pan
Mix:
6 tart apples, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup nuts
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
dash nutmeg
Place into a greased pie pan.

Mix:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
1 stick of softened oleo

Spread on top of the pie filling.

Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.

What Have the Americans Ever Done for the World?

Hello, Americans! We have been having a bit of an image problem of late and truthfully we aren't looking quite as good as we used to, especially in comparison to some other countries which I shall not name.

Leave it to a Brit to remind us of our amazing legacy in Atom Bomb to Santa Claus! Basically a book of trivia on American inventions and inventors and artists in all categories of life, readers will be amazed at just what America can be thanked (or blamed) for.

Like air conditioning, first installed in 1924 at Detroit's J. L. Hudson Department store.

Author Trevor Homer briefly traces the history of shaving, including the Perrett "safety" razor that had a blade set in a wooden guard. But it took Americans King Camp Gillette, William Painter and William Nickerson to create the safety razor with disposable blades (thereby creating an eternal after-market).

Today across the world people of every class wear jeans, with zippers, both American born.

Bubblegum! Sliced bread! Coco-Cola! Liquid Paper! Kentucky Fried Chicken! Post-it Notes!Bubble Wrap! Where would we be without bubble wrap to pop? The hamburger and the hot dog and pizza as we know it--all American cuisine--as is the chocolate chip cookie and potato chips.

Okay, let's get serious now. The computer mouse, the Internet, email, Facebook, GPS, search engines, and video games--all American inventions. And credit cards and ATMs. Then there is rocket science and Frisbees that look like flying saucers. Don't forget Robber Barons and the megastores Amazon and Wal-Mart. Even criminals and hate groups and judicial punishments get their due! (Not as inspiring a chapter. Nor is the Weapons of War, from the revolver to the Atom Bomb.)

Howard covers music, too. Jazz and Rock and Roll and Punk and all the dance crazes and the machines we played records on, the Gramophone and the Jukebox (patented in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1905). And writers and architects and sports heroes and fashion designers.

I love the chapter on Unlikely Inventors. Where else would I learn that George Washington created the wine coaster to protect his linen tablecloths? Or that the swivel chair I sit on while typing this was an invention by Thomas Jefferson? Actor Steve McQueen invented the bucket seat for his racing cars and Zeppo Marx of the Marx Brothers invented the clamp which held the atomic bomb safe within the Enola Gay.

Then there are the movers and shakers of the world of invention, the Masters of Change, visionary inventors, moral leaders, and Thomas Nast, artist of political cartoons whose portrayal of Santa Claus set the standard which was later embellished by Coca-Cola's iconic Santa Claus ads.

Medical advancements and inventions include the polio vaccine (thanks to Henrietta Lack's immortal cells) and heart surgery to Botox and Viagra.

Howard ends his collection with a reminder of the basic Freedoms that are enjoyed in America, noting that while we may be far from a Utopia, we are still an example of what can be achieved in a free country.

Thank you, Mr. Howard, for reminding us.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Atom Bomb to Santa Claus: What Have the Americans Ever Done for Us?
by Trevor Homer
Thistle Publishing
Pub Date 29 Nov 2018
ISBN: 9781786080820
PRICE: £9.99 (GBP)

Pin Pals: 40 Patchwork Pinnies, Poppets, and Pincushions with Pizzazz

 FORTY pincushions to make! What a great scrap buster idea! This could be your next addiction!

When I recently reviewed Antique American Needlework Tools by Dawn Cook Ronningen I was quite struck by the historic sewing objects women made, especially the pincushions. So, I was excited when I saw Carrie Nelson's new book Pin Pals.

In July 2017, Carrie made 49 pincushions in 31 days, inspired to sew every day by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts. The journey was about play, pleasure, and practice, and not about pressure and perfectionism.

Pincushions don't have to be tomatoes! They can be any shape or size. How about a tetrahedron?

You can use any kind of fabric scraps! Some of the patterns use very tiny pieces.

Carrie closes the stuffed pincushion with 40 weight thread then adds a diagonal "X" cross stitch over the area for extra security.

Aren't these little beach houses adorable? The photo shows the crushed walnut shells used to stuff the pin cushion. Other stuffing options include sand, sawdust, rice, and cotton or poly stuffing.

Most of the patterns are pieced, but there is an adorable daisy fusible applique. 

I have some gift items to make for Christmas, but I can't wait to make my own Pin Pals!

See photos of all 40 pincushions at https://www.shopmartingale.com/pin-pals.html

See more books with Carrie's patterns here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Pin Pals - 40 Patchwork Pinnies, Poppets, and Pincushions with Pizzazz
by Carrie Nelson
$22.99 Print Version + eBook
eBook Only (-$8.00)
ISBN: 9781604689594

American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us To Love Bananas, Spam, and Jello

Why do we eat the foods we eat? Someone told us to eat them. Or--"sold us" to eat them.

Christian Ward's American Advertising Cookbooks tells the story of how corporations and big business influenced Americans to buy their products, creating an American cuisine that included Jello, Spam, and 7-Up in baby's milk. 

As a kid growing up in the 50s I was deluged with television ads telling me to buy the bread with the red, yellow, and blue balloons and sugared cereals with cartoon mascots. Then came Golden Arches and Coke Cola vs. Pepsi and newfangled foods like Pringles and Fritos. Remember the Where's the Beef, Beef--it's what America eats, and the Got Milk? celebrity ads? How many thousands of food commercials have I seen?

 Velveta actually was once real cheese. Now its a "cheese product"
vintage ad from my collection

While we Boomer kids were pleading for the latest product marketed on our TV shows, our mothers were collecting recipes from the magazines she brought home from the grocery store. Did a 25 cent rebate inspire Mom to try La Choy Chop Suey? (Dad hated it.) Did she get her favorite Spanish Rice recipe from a magazine ad?

Perhaps this La Choy magazine ad inspired Mom to try Chinese
from my collection

Spanish Rice was one of Mom's standard meals. from my collection

I don't remember Mom having any two-inch-thick Cookbook Bibles. She did have a collection of smaller cookbooks published by companies. Hotpoint Ovens. Fleischmann yeast. The Joy of Jello. Pies Men Like. She had recipes that came with her Bundt cake pan and electric skillet and cookie press. Mom used Bisquick and had the Bisquick Cookbook. I remember the coffee cake with streusel topping she often made.

some of Mom's recipe booklets

I remember learning how to make mini-pizzas with English muffins. Another magazine recipe...

Mom made a few signature dishes from scratch, but she also loved to try every new product that came out on the market including frozen TV dinners. I am grateful for one thing: we never had to eat the ubiquitous canned green beans/mushroom soup/Durkee fried onion casserole at holidays. (Dorcas Reilly invented the casserole recipe for Campbell's Soup, the most famous and important recipe they ever created. I read about her passing while working on this review.)

When I married, we began with Hamburger Helper and recipe booklets and magazine recipes. Before long we were cooking from scratch, even making our own bread.

my 1970s bread recipes from Robin Hood Flour 

I am fascinated by the history of food. So the idea of a book about how Big Business inspired American housewives to buy products caught my attention. The book includes a history of what we ate and why and photos from Ward's advertising cookbook collection. There were some pretty awful recipes. Like Ham Banana Rolls. Chiquita Banana says it's good, so it must be. 

Seeing the advertisements and recipes is great fun. But the book is more than a trip down memory lane to laugh at the ill-advised foods we once ate. The essays on the history of food and cooking in America include some stories that may shock readers. Political intervention in foreign governments, environmental degradation, racism, manipulation to encourage buying things that are bad for us--This is the history of American capitalism in American kitchens. 

Jello Pudding Cheesecake advertisement, my collection

Did you know that Daniel Dole went to Honolulu in 1841 with a missionary group, then with his son Sanford helped to depose Queen Liliuokalani--and then placed Sanford as President of the Republic of Hawaii? The family then built their pineapple plantations. And no, pineapples are not native to Hawaii.

You have perhaps heard about Banana Republics. Bananas were brought to South America to feed slaves. North Americans first ate them at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. People went ape over bananas. Banana plantations were planted all over Central American, forcing out native species. Over time, United Fruit became the banana monopoly, powerful enough to interfere in Bananaland politics.

The book is divided into Why Are We Eating This and Empire Building in the Free World? Chapter topics include:

• Bananas & Pineapples: The food of paupers and kings
• Chiquita Banana vs. the World: Banana republics, pineapple princes, and the Boston families who started it all
• Class, race, and cultural signifiers: How cookbooks reinforce and change our way of thinking
• Rationing & Fish Sticks- Food as both tool and weapon
• Invasion of the Home Economists: The uneasy relationship between food science and marketing

Photo chapters cover all the major 'food groups': jello, pineapple, bananas, mystery meats, and sweets. 

Ward discusses the roots of American cooking and the first American cookbook, and how immigrants were taught to make American foods as part of their assimilation. 

Readers learn how the government got involved to clean up the food business and how Home Economics became a scientific part of education and entertaining with food became an art form. 

The Mad Men era saw entertaining become an art form. Vintage ad from my collection.

American Advertising Cookbooks would be a great gift with wide appeal. It was Boomer nostalgia for me. My son and friends loved the idea of this book and can't wait to get a hold of it.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us To Love Bananas, Spam, and Jello

by Christina Ward

Publication: November 27, 2018

ISBN 9781934170748, 1934170747

Trade Paperback 208 pages

$22.95 USD, $33.50 CAD

from the publisher:

American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O is a deeply researched and entertaining survey of twentieth-century American food. Connecting cultural, social, and geopolitical aspects, author Christina Ward (Preservation: The Art & Science of Canning, Fermentation, and Dehydration, Process 2017) uses her expertise to tell the fascinating and often infuriating story of American culinary culture.

Readers will learn of the role bananas played in the Iran-Contra scandal, how Sigmund Freud's nephew decided Carmen Miranda would wear fruit on her head, and how Puritans built an empire on pineapples. American food history is rife with crackpots, do-gooders, con men, and scientists all trying to build a better America-while some were getting rich in the process.

Loaded with full-color images, Ward pulls recipes and images from her vast collection of cookbooks and a wide swath of historical advertisements to show the influence of corporations on our food trends. Though easy to mock, once you learn the true history, you will never look at Jell-O the same way again!

****

I have shared many recipes from Mid-Century magazines over the years but also from Advertising Booklets. Click on the titles of the booklets below to read my posts.

Pies Men Like 
Coconut Dishes Everyone Likes 
Big Boy BBQ Book
641 Tested Recipes from the Sealtest Kitchen

1931 Advertising cookbook for coconut. From my collection.

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

A cold and gloomy Sunday afternoon in November was the perfect time to finish Killing Commendatore. I sat down with a cup of tea and read the last 110 pages.

I had begun the book over two weeks previous. Usually, it takes me a few days to read a book. But this one was the size of two books--the advanced reading copy is 674 pages! It took several weeks to read, with little impetus to flip pages. The style of writing felt leisurely, describing mundane things like what people were wearing or what the protagonist was cooking. These details puzzled me, for I really wasn't sure of their purpose.

Still, something drew me on; I couldn't even name it. The story was a journey that I was willing to take. I trusted the author to make it worth my while.

The narrator's wife of six years decides she wants a divorce. He has made a living by portrait painting, believing he has settled when he could have developed his contemporary art style. He believes his wife gave up on him because he had settled.

First, he gets into his car and drives around Japan. A fellow artist and friend offers him the use of his father's house in the mountains, a retreat where he had created the traditional Japanese style paintings that made him famous. The father is now in assisted living with dementia.

The narrator moves into the mountaintop house. He is in a slump, unable to paint. He teaches art classes and has liaisons with married women. He is approached by Menshiki, a mysterious man from a neighboring mountain. "Menshiki" means "avoiding color," very apt considering his pure white hair and secluded and walled-off life. Menshiki commissions the narrator to paint his portrait, and then to paint a portrait of a girl he believes to be his daughter. The girl happens to be one of the narrator's art students. He discovers a new way of painting that is intuitive, impressionistic, and powerful.

Meanwhile, otherworldly experiences arise that disturb the membrane between reality and the unreal.

Soon after moving into the house, the narrator discovers a painting in the attic,  Killing Commendatore. It is based on a scene from Mozart's Don Giovanni but also perhaps an image from the artist's experience as a student in Nazi-controlled Vienna, painted in the traditional Japanese style. No one has ever seen the painting before. A ringing bell in the forest leads the narrator to a mysterious pit. Ideas and Metaphors take a corporeal form, based on the images in Killing Commendatore. When the girl disappears our narrator goes on a quest to save her, entering another reality, crossing a river, walking through a dark wood, and crawling through a narrow tunnel.

The last half was intriguing and rewarding. The novel is called an "homage to The Great Gatsby," and I can see that. But I also connected it to other literary works and mythology.

In the end, the narrator states that his capacity to believe made him different from Menshiki; he is not one of T. S. Eliot's "straw men," a hollow man without feeling., for he trusts there is some guide which leads us where we need to be.

This is a story of transformation, a death and rebirth re-enacted, and yet the narrator's endpoint is to return to the life he started with, as a portrait painter, reunited with his wife, embracing her child. It is enough, now, for them both.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Killing Commendatore: A Novel
by Haruki Murakami
A. A. Knopf
ISBN-10: 052552004X
ISBN-13: 978-0525520047

Another UFO Finished and Book News

I just bound off a quilt I made 8 years ago and 4 houses ago! It was one of the many tops I took to the long arm quilter, knowing I would never hand quilt all the tops in my stash. 

*****

I have a load of books to read before the end of January! Still, there were two non-review books I had to read. I obtained Bob Woodward's Fear: Trump in the White House through the local library and bought Michelle Obama's Becoming. I read Fear during the day and reserved Becoming for bedtime reading since it would be less likely to disturb my sleep, lol.

Several years ago I reviewed Barren Cove by Ariel S. Winter through NetGalley, a sci-fi novel set in a world run by robots. I loved the book, plus it's a retelling of Wuthering Heights so that made it more dear to my heart. I discovered the paperback edition includes a blurb from MY REVIEW! Added to my bookshelf now.

I was offered two books from the publisher.

Algonquin Books reached out in an email saying, "we saw your glowing review of Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho and think you would really enjoy an upcoming novel of ours, a debut that’s getting a lot of buzz, Sugar Run by Mesha Maren. We’d love to send you an advance copy of Sugar Run. Set in West Virginia, this is a searing story about making a run for another life."  My review will run in a few months, but it is a memorable book.

Atria Books sent me a surprise package with The Falconer by Dana Czapnik. I was uncertain until I started reading. The writing is brilliant! It is about a love-forlorn girl in 1980s NYC who loves basketball.

I won The Cassandra by Shara Shields from LibraryThing. I am eager to begin it, too! Inspired by the Greek myth, it is set during WWII about a woman working in a top secret facility.

I also won The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg from Bookish First, still to come. The address book in questions documents everyone Doris has met and loved during her long life.

Other books on my review shelf to be read:

The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner is about girls who met in a WWII Internment Camp

Tinkers by Paul Harding is a 10th Anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

The Escape Room by Mehan Goldin a thriller

A Glad Obedience by Water Brueggemann is on hymnody

Learning to See by Elise Hooper is historical fiction on photographer Dorothea Lange

Louisa on the Front Lines by Samantha Seiple is about Louisa May Alcott as a Civil War nurse

Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane)

Overrun by Andrew Reeves is about the Asian Carp threat to the Great Lakes

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts (The Perfect Horse, The $80 Champion) is about Mrs. L. Frank Baum

Professor Chandra Follows his Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, a story of a late-life transformation

The Editor is by Stephen Rowley, author of Lily and the Octopus

Saving Meghan by D.J. Palmer is a thriller

Daughter of Molokai by Alan Brennert (Molokai)

*****

It is exciting when books I have read come up for prizes. Here are some that I have been made aware of on social media. My reviews for all of these books can be found on my blog in the "search" bar.

E. C. Huntley notified me that The Tyre was up for the People's Book Prize. 

Spaceman in Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar is up for the Arthur B Clark Award and the Dublin Literary Award. Other nominees for the Dubin Literary Award include books I reviewed: Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed, The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne, Idaho by Emily Ruskovich, Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout, Tin Man by Sarah Winman, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas; non-review books which I have read include Exit West, The Leavers, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Sing Unburied Sing, and Lincoln in the Bardo.

The Aspen Book Prize includes The Boat People by Sharon Bala, American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and There There by Tommy Orange.

The Southern Book Prize nominees include The Barrowfields by Philip Lewis, The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash, and Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin.

The Costa First Novel Award includes Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson; the Cost Award Shortlist includes The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman.

100 Notable Books from the New York Times books which I reviewed include American Marriage, The House of Broken Angels, State of Freedom, There There, A View of the Empire at Sunset, Warlight, Calypso, The Library Book, and Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown.