Blood And Bones Of the Disowned Daughter

To be honest I tried reading this because everyone said it was so good. The prose is SO dense and self-serious, though. I read through the disowning scene and then sort of skimmed through the rest of the book until she joined the thief group. Is it less ponderous later on? Right now it feels like every sentence is competing to be the most metaphorically despairing and thus most worthy of a literary award.

The finale is beautifully layered with rebellion and redemption. Lin’s journey from private heir to full-time revolutionary is full of difficult decisions and comes to a head with the brutal choice to continue to follow the rules of a corrupt system or to tear it all down. But in the end, it is Jovis’s storyline and his mysterious rogue nature that proves to be the most compelling, along with his secret regarding Mephi. The Alanga were so completely shrouded in mystery for so much of the novel and the realization that everything that the readers had learned about the history of the Empire was actually a pack of lies is very satisfying. It motivates one to immediately go back to the beginning of the novel in search of answers that had been right in front of them.

The more interesting reversal, though, is when the heiress gets her revenge and regains her company only to find it meaningless. All the people she loved are gone and often have been replaced by people who are not as nice. She struggles to come to terms with the years she has lost and the person she has become in the ashes of her old self. But instead of simple closure, the story can follow her as she tries to find new purpose. Perhaps she decides to give her money away, to ditch the family name, to use her wealth and power to help others who have been destroyed in similar ways. The narrative of the “rising” from the ashes of a fallen heroine is not complete if she simply returns to where she started. In fact, that would be hollow. Instead, she has to forge a new path forward and the story has to explore whether revenge is truly healing or if it merely continues to destroy. Such a story is rare and even more powerful for it.

It’s a work of fiction. So what? What’s striking is that this highly orchestrated novel uses realism to structure a number of crucial scenes. Long stretches of reverently detailed evidence analysis create a sense of rhythm that makes the few bursts of action or revelation all the more effective. A true story would be driven by accidents. Deaver has here orchestrating a series of carefully constructed scenes to the ultimate peak of tension. What he has written is not a report. It is a work of art. The detailed research serves as the raw notes for the story. How you trust the information about the phosphorescent remains or about the taxonomy of a certain beetle is separate from how you trust the author with the “feel” or “pulse” of the overall story.

' DENYING MY SON'S GUILT ' - a really slow burn that pays off in the end. Very '?The Fugitive'? 'Mommie Dearest'? But far more realistic and therefore much more compelling. A mother's denial leads to a determination to find out the truth, even if it means skipping through police tape and then using her computer to hack into emails. Her son's estranged best friend is a great addition as he continues to fuel the accusations of guilt held by the mother. A very human, flawed set of characters making very poor choices. The final scene - an empty court room. Very impressive.

My copy of this is actually on loan to a friend, and she keeps coming back to the food descriptions long after finishing the book. Yes, they are vivid and detailed and quite frequently of cheap, tough cuts of meat and stale bread and thin, insubstantial broth, but actually they are so much more than that. They are a description of a family of people who are desperate for safety, for truth and for a way out. This is contrasted with the butcher's trade, which deals in abundance in a most unpleasant and grotesque way. So yes, the book is about a wife who suspects her butcher husband of being a serial killer, but it is also about the daily brutal struggle to exist on the edge of poverty and it is the quietest and most desperate moments around the hearth of the family home that contain the soul of the book, not the mystery which drives the plot.

I have not read any true stories of children in detention camps but Zara Fraillon has written a brilliant novel about a boy, Subhi, who is living in an Australian immigration camp with his mother and brother. While Subhi’s experiences are not ‘true’ his life in the detention camp is vividly portrayed and his plight evokes emotions and anger at the injustices he suffers. His friendship with Jimmie, an outsider, brings hope into Subhi’s life and while a work of fiction, the book draws on many real life stories of children in detention camps around the world and of the experiences of many refugees. The Bone Sparrow brings to life the plight of many children living in the worst of circumstances.

So often children are depicted as fragile and weak; Fraillon has gone to so much trouble to portray a child strong in the face of horror. His friendship with the wild boy Jimmie is also very real and authentic. Of course the two characters are fictional but the situations in which they find themselves are not and often go unreported. I am thinking of the current Rohingya crisis as well as reports from Nauru of children in detention. The title of this wonderful book, The Bone Sparrow, is also a real term used to describe a particular stage in the development of a bird’s wing. A bone so fragile yet crucial to the bird’s flight in the future. That is how I feel Fraillon has portrayed child refugees – so fragile yet determined to survive against all odds. This book is a love letter to the voices of refugee children that have not been heard yet, written in a way that is accessible to a middle grade reader but in no way sugars the horror of what is happening to these children.

The ending of 'Like Mother, Like Daughter' really stuck with me because of how it subverts expectations. At first, it seems like a classic tale of generational trauma, with the daughter repeating her mother's mistakes. But in the final act, there's this beautiful moment where the daughter finds an old journal of her mom's and realizes her mother fought the same battles. Instead of continuing the cycle, she chooses forgiveness and breaks free. The last scene shows them baking together—something they'd always fought over—but now it's peaceful. It's not a perfect happily ever after, but it feels earned after all the emotional bruises they give each other earlier.

What I love is how the story doesn't villainize either character. The mother isn't some cartoonish monster—she's just a woman who parented the only way she knew how. And the daughter's rebellion isn't glamorized either. That gray area makes the ending hit harder when they finally meet in the middle. The symbolism of the burnt cookies they laugh about in the finale? Chef's kiss.

Ever compare official translations to old fan translations? I read the old fan translation first, and the new official translation seems rather watered down in parts, even making some of the edgier lines less crude than the fan translation made them. Maybe I just notice that kind of thing more though.

'The Marks of Cain' by Stephen Hunter is like a DNA test gone horribly wrong – in the best possible way. It is a wild and exciting ride into a combination of genealogy and conspiracy thriller. But it is also a serious book which explores eugenics and hidden historical secrets – and the hero is in over his head. Fans of The Da Vinci Code will enjoy this but it is a much grittier and more original book than that bestseller. And the setting in the Basque region of Europe is unique in thrillers – a real added flavor to the story.