The Winter Garden

Having followed this book’s sale on B&N for awhile, I was delighted to find it for a friend in a used books store in NYC. This time it wasn’t just the cover page, but the blurb as well with its hauntingly beautiful and ethereal note depicting coldness, sadness and something more.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are sisters by blood but strangers in real life. One chooses family life over her dreams while the other is just the opposite, but they share a common trait – inability to rely on their families/partners in the hour of need. This trait is deeply rooted in their relation with their mother Anya, a woman they’ve known only to be cold and distant. The only semblance of any communication or connection the 3 ladies share is a fairytale, of a Russian Pheasant girl Vera and her Prince Sasha…a tale magical yet dark and dreadful. Meredith, Nina are forced to reunite with Anya on the death of their father Evan, who insists that Anya complete the fairytale once and for all. The reunion doesn’t come easily either..for when Anya retells the fairytale, the sisters begin to make the connection with their mother’s past.

Anya’s fairytale is set during the Siege of Leningrad (Russia) in WW II, when Russian women were witnesses to a number of inconceivable atrocities committed by Stalin’s government. These come to light through the Vera’s thoughts, her tribulations in her role as a young daughter and mother and her struggle to survive with meagre hopes and abundant grief that constantly shadows her. It is described at the beginning that Anya is color blind through reference to the decor of her home, Belya Nochi but as the tale progresses, you get that strong feeling that it is a metaphorical description of Anya’s mental state, a residue of her past. Evan brings her a new life and with it the hopes of recreating everything she lost, and here the author leaves it to the readers’ imagination to conclude whether Anya ever accepted her life in America.

The other symbolic reference to Anya’s past is the book title, The Winter Garden, which originates from Anya’s own garden at Belya Nochi that characterizes Anya’s past…her country, her family and the people she lost, and is the source of Anya’s comfort and connection to reality. As with other books by Kristin Hannah, the subject of this tale is mother – daughter relationship and the imprints that parents leave on their children. Although parents may brush off their children’s attributes as not being related to them, they will find on introspection that it is quite the opposite…for a child can learn only from its parents. That is what happens to Meredith and Nina as they subconsciously pick on Anya’s cold and aloof nature and project it on each other and their confused partners. Gradually as Anya opens up to her children, the sisters’ find new beginnings. For all the above reasons, I’m still pondering whether a physical copy or an ebook would make sense for my personal library.

The Wedding Officer

Anthony Capella’s books seem so diverse from title to title in terms of the genre that it is difficult to nail it as a particular genre. His stories appear to be an amalgamation of travelogue, history particularly surrounding a food item and part adventure with a lot of romance thrown in for good measure.

That’s the feeling I had until I read “The Wedding Officer” which digressed from the structure mentioned above that it caught me by surprise. Set in Naples, this tale is woven amidst the WWII when the Allied Forces were deployed to Italy to stop Germany’s siege. Livia Pertini is a happy-go-lucky girl who is known for her culinary skills in Osteria. The scene then cuts to the war-torn Naples introducing us to the hero – Captain James Gould who is stationed newly at Naples in the FSS division as a Wedding Officer. His assignment is to discourage his fellow officers from marrying the Italian prostitutes. And Livia is a war widow struggling to survive on meager means.

James takes up his post with enthusiasm which is certainly dampened by the Americans who collaborate with the Italians, a fact unknown to the British forces. He manages to get a somewhat firm grip of the situation by closing down all the restaurants as well as writing up negative reports on all the “Italian fiances” his officers got engaged to. The frustrated Italians decide on a scheme which intertwines  Livia and James’ lives creating a peach cobbler effect! Now don’t ask how I came up with this term..but then I did.

The book falls under a blend of genre that include travel, food, history, WWII and romance. As for the characters, Livia and James are very interesting characters…their chemistry and passions for each other makes them a perfect couple. James’s naivety creates the perception of being incapable of fighting at the front-lines but he surprises everyone with his brevity, common sense and determination to bring the baddies to justice. On a similar note Livia comes across as self-sufficient, brave with sharp survival instincts and this helps her survive the war and get her happy-ending with James.

Anthony Capella mentions Naples ’44 by the travel writer Norman Lewis. In this, his wartime diary, Lewis relates how as a young Intelligence officer he was sent to the city during the first months of the Allied invasion of Italy. The Germans were in retreat, but slowly, and Naples was the headquarters of the combined Anglo-American Fifth Army as they fought their way up to Rome. This combined with Capella’s visit to Naples and his work with the noted chef Jamie Oliver has inspired his ideas for this novel.

My review won’t be complete if I don’t mention the primary food theme…Italian cooking. And this reminds you of mozzarella, pasta, burrata, red wines, fine dining, siestas and countryside cooking. This book with its mouth-watering tendency is a definite must-read!

Atonement

This single word starts on a typewriter as the movie begins. The film, adapted from Ian McEwan’s novel, stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as the tragic-stricken couple. The film is directed by Joe Wright, and its picturization is quite similar to “Pride and Prejudice”, also directed by Wright.

The story is set in 4 parts, and at first looks a bit complex but you’ll gradually grasp it for sure unless you have a penchant for intense dramatics. This is quite complex for me to summarize and so I treat this as an attempt at summarizing a complex plot:

Briony Tallis, an aspiring writer and the youngest of the three in a wealthy English family, is rather fanciful believing only what she sees. She doesn’t really try to understand the dynamics behind the scenes she witnesses which are rather romantically-charged situations between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the son of their housekeeper. Cecilia and Robbie are confused on their feelings for each other and while they are in the process of sorting them out, whatever incidences Briony happens to witness only add to painting a negative image of Robbie in her mind. She considers Robbie as a maniac, and her cousin Lola’s rape adds to the suspense, when Briony blatant confession that Robbie was the perpetrator rips the family apart – Robbie’s future is destroyed due to his imprisonment for a crime he never committed, Cecilia severs her connections with her whole family, and their brother Leon’s friend Paul who is the actual perpetrator goes scot-free.

A couple of years later, the 2nd world war is on and Robbie forced to participate, tries to survive a mortal wound with the hope of returning to Cecilia (they briefly meet before he’s called away for the wall). Briony gives up her admission at Cambridge and joins as a nurse to atone for her mistake that ripped her own family apart. She realizes the full nature of what her fanciful perceptions cost her and tries to reconcile with Cecilia. Now here’s where the twist is – while the movie shows Briony meeting Cecilia and Robbie, and telling them of Lola’s wedding with Paul, and the truth behind the fateful night of Robbie’s arrest, in reality the reunion never occurs. Robbie, in fact, dies in the war and Cecilia dies in an Underground station flooding. Briony carries this guilt with her until her old age, and this prompts her to write her last (rather first) story “Atonement” through which she hopes to re-unite the couple post the war, painting a happily ever-after ending for them.

The really catchy dialogues are towards the end, when during her final interview, Briony reveals how the book, although it narrates the actual incidences, is fictional towards the end as she intends to atone for her mistake, and also to lessen the confusion of her readers. She also says that authors are the gods for their books as they have the power to make or break a character or a story for that matter, which is true through and through!!

Frankly, it’s a 70% silent film filled heavily with emotional expressions, and 30% dialogue based where the dialogues are present only to push the movie forward. I diligently ffwded through the silences (seriously couldn’t stand them) what with my disastrous experience with “There will be blood” which turned to “There was a headache” for me later . But silences apart, it’s an amazing movie worth watching at least once simply for the sheer intensity of the storyline rather than the characters. A word of caution – either read the book or watch the movie..don’t do both.