Read in 2026 - 24, 25

Because of my backlog of reviews and other posts I want to write, today I'm publishing two book reviews in one post (also because neither book, in my opinion, really "needs" its own post).

# 24: Voices of the Universe

Elias J. Connor

 

This was one of those books I kept reading in spite of not really enjoying it – I was hoping the story would pick up, and the main character would grow on me.

Neither happened, although the story as such held enough potential.

 

We meet Janie when she’s 12 years old, a shy but not unhappy girl who loves to watch the stars at night.

She thinks a lot about her place as a tiny human being in the vastness of the universe, and writes about her thoughts and dreams in her diary.

 

After the breakdown of her parents’ marriage and her Dad moving away, Janie becomes more and more withdrawn.

She doesn’t get along with her mother, and a first tender romantic interest with a boy at school who seems to understand her ends in tears.

 

University follows, and once again Janie feels like the odd one out.

But it is there, with the help of fellow students and a handful of other people, that she finally asserts herself and even finds love.

 

Life looks really good for Janie now – until she receives very sad news…

 

I am not going to say more about the actual story, only that Janie goes through more ups and downs until the book ends with her peaceful death at old age.

 

The story itself is not bad, but the writing is repetitive, and continuity is not always maintained. For instance, as an adult all of a sudden without explanation Janie and her mother are very close and supportive of each other, when before they hardly spoke, and Janie lived away from home.

Also, editing wasn’t up to scratch – apart from the repetitiveness, there are several instances where Janie’s and her daughter’s name are muddled up, and her daughter suddenly is called her grandchild when she is actually Janie’s mother’s grandchild.

I am quite picky when it comes to such inaccuracies; small mistakes, but they could be so easily avoided.

 

Not a total waste of time but definitely not a must read, and I am glad that it was a free ebook and didn’t cost me more than the time I spent reading it on the train.

 

 

Not my picture, but the same edition

# 25: Rembrandt’s Hat

Bernard Malamud

 

My book-swapping friend A. lent me this paperback, and no doubt she’ll want to know my opinion.

Well… it is hard to really explain my impression of this collection of short (and not so short) stories.

My overall verdict is that I can very well go on living without ever reading anything by Malamud again, while I don’t doubt his skill and talent as a writer at all.

 

It is simply that I could not engage with the stories, on no level.

Some of them are outright absurd or bizarre, but not in a funny way (at least not according to my sense of humour).

Others are simply sad, leaving me as a reader somewhat downcast while at the same time relieved that my life is nothing like what is depicted in the story.

 

I guess Malamud and I got off on the wrong foot when I started to read the first story and was appalled by his nasty description of a girl with Down syndrome.

The collection of stories was originally published in 1973, but some of the stories are older, from the 1950s and 60s.

 

Although Malamud as an author’s name was familiar to me from my years working at the library, I’d never read anything by him before now.

Maybe I am the one being nasty now, but I honestly can’t see what made him win the Pulitzer Prize – at least not based on these stories.

Read in 2026 - 23: Elsewhere

Elsewhere

Gabrielle Zevin

My sister lent me this paperback during our recent holiday in Ripon, and I finished it on our last night there.

It is a Young Adult novel in the genre “Magic Realism” (according to wikipedia), but although my own Young Adult time was decades ago, I enjoyed the book very much.

 

The idea behind the story is that people who die are neither here nor there, but elsewhere.

And “Elsewhere” is indeed the place where 15-year-old Liz lands after she dies in a hit and run accident while cycling to the mall, where she was supposed to meet her best friend to help choose her prom dress.

 

Although Liz makes a friend during the passage on the ship to Elsewhere, and upon arrival meets her grandmother (who died before she was born), and Elsewhere doesn’t seem a bad place at all, she longs for her life back on Earth. 

As a teenager, she still had so much ahead and so much to look forward to, and she can not accept that she’ll never be 16, never will have a driving license, graduate from High School, go to college, move out from home and generally do all the things on does as one is growing up.

 

Will she come to terms with her new “life”?

 

There was a lot in this book to like. Most of the characters are like real people, their thoughts and actions plausible. I guess my favourites were Betty, Liz’s grandmother, and the dog she adopts (yes, pets go Elsewhere, too, when they die).

I wasn’t quite in agreement with the ending, but that’s just my personal taste, I suppose.

It was my first read by this author. My sister has more, and I might borrow them from her, too. Clicking on word "wikipedia" above takes you to the entry about the book, which of course links to an entry about the author, which I knew nothing about until reading up on her.

Read in 2026 - 22: Queen Esther

Queen Esther

John Irving

It’s been a while since I last read an Irving, and I remember that I have not liked each of his books to the same extent. My favourites so far were “Widow for a Year” and “Owen Meany”.

For my birthday this year, my sister gave me “Queen Esther”, and although I have finished it weeks ago, I only now got round to writing my review.

 

In short, it’s a great read. Irving’s handling of language, his descriptions of characters, places and situations as well as dialogue are at their best in this book.

The decisions people take and how they deal with each other may not always be plausible or relateable, but that’s life, isn’t it – we don’t always “get” other people and why they do (or don’t) what they do (or not).

 

The book spans eight decades, following Esther’s life and that of her son from 1905 to 1981.

There are occasional dips further back in time to when Esther’s Au Pair employers (and something like adoptive parents for her) were young.

 

I’d say that the life of Esther’s son takes up more room than hers, but she is always hovering in the background even when she is elusive.

 

Born in Vienna and orphaned at the age of 4 after her father dies on the ship to Portland and her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland, Esther is unwavering in her determination to live as her mother taught her, as a Jew, She is exceptionally clever and loved by everyone at the orphanage. When she is 14, the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family, take her in as their latest Au Pair. They aren’t Jewish themselves but despise anti-Semitism.

Again, she is loved by the entire family and fully returns that love.

 

The youngest daughter, Honor, wants a child but without all the physical things involved from conception through pregnancy, giving birth and breastfeeding. Esther, on the other hand, has an insatiable appetite for knowledge and life and wants to at least try everything she can - including pregnancy and birth.

Together, the two young women work out a solution that satisfies them both – Jimmy is the result, with Esther as his biological mother but Honor the mother he grows up with.

 

In the 1960s, he studies in Vienna and makes friends for life there. His approach to fatherhood is as unusual as that of Esther and Honor to motherhood, but it all works out in the end, making for happy families and lasting friendships.

 

I could go on and on about the various elements of the story; the characters and their quirks, the recurring references to being tall or short, to Jewishness and what it means, to wrestling and working for the Mossad.

But I’d rather have you read the book for yourselves, if you found my brief outline interesting enough. I believe you won’t regret it.

 

There is no need to link to further introduce John Irving, I guess – he is well known and popular enough, and of course he has his own website as well as an article on wikipedia if you want to look him up.

One Weekend, Two Hikes

When I spend the weekend at my husband's, we are often too busy to go hiking; there is usually stuff to do around his mother's house and garden, or we are invited to some event or other, or there is something to do with the village band etc.

But last weekend, amazingly we had NO appointments at all, and because temperatures were forecast to be very high during the day, garden work wasn't advisable unless one would start very early in the morning.

Instead, we got up at 7:00 on both days and were out of the house by 9:00, when it was still wonderfully fresh.

Our hike on Saturday (8 August) was a repeat of one we'd done twice before; funnily enough, once on Saturday, 8 August 2020, and then again on Sunday, 11 August 2024. Clicking of the dates will take you to my posts from back then.

The Gertelbach waterfalls weren't exactly down to a trickle, but there was a lot less water coming down the steep rocky slope than in previous years. It still was very nice to be there, though; even just the sound of the water is refreshing, and since most of the hike is in the woods under the shade of trees, we were fine.

A six-legged cow?

As before, we stopped at the Herta-Hütte to eat our sandwiches, and later for a shandy at the beer garden. 

View from Herta-Hütte (Herta's Hut)

Instead of driving straight home afterwards, O.K. suggested we have a look at the Schwarzenbach Talsperre and drove us further up into the Black Forest to that special place. A water reservoir was created there exactly 100 years ago when a dam was built and the farmers and other people living at the bottom of the valley were resettled to other places. Now the wall is in need of repair, and to achieve that, several months ago the reservoir was let run empty, and the work is now in full swing.

It makes for a strange and fascinating place, seeing the bottom of the lake and the entire wall, normally underwater on one side. We weren't the only people to have a look! Boards with information about the work 100 years ago and what is now being done line the path, and we found it all very interesting.

Water-side of the dam

All this is usually under water!

The other side of the dam, after we'd walked across. This side is never under water.

We still didn't go straight home after this but stopped in town for ice creams. Back at the cottage, we were ready for an afternoon nap, and later went across the road to my mother-in-law for a drink and a chat on her terrace before we retreated to our own terrace for a sundowner. It was, by the way, our 3 months wedding anniversary :-)

Sunday (9 August) was forecast to be hotter, and we opted for a much shorter hike. This one, too, was a repeat; in October 2023 we did this tour from Reichenbach to the Martinstein ("Martin's stone") (with slight variations) before.

Parts of the tour were in the sun but there was still plenty of shade in the woods, and we had started early enough to be back home before it became too hot.

Martinstein

This time, we didn't have a meal at the Martinstein Hiesli, only a very welcome, well-chilled shandy. 

Back home, we had coffee after a rest. While we were napping, a few drops of rain fell, but evaporated almost as soon as they hit the ground.

In the evening, we enjoyed a nice meal of merguez with fried zucchini (courgette) and yellow pepper plus couscous, out on the balcony.