Before I Go to Sleep

Watson. S.J. Before I Go to Sleep. New York: HarperCollins. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

The bedroom is strange.

Unfamiliar. I don't know where I am, how I came to be here. I don't know how I'm going to get home.

Description:

A woman wakes one morning with no memory of where she is or even who she is. There is a greying man snoring in bed beside her. When she looks into the bathroom mirror she views a woman in her late 40's, a disturbing image to her as her last memory is her as a college student. Decades apparently have passed and are completely unknown to her. There are photos pasted to the mirror of a man, the same man from the bed, with the notation that "This is Ben, your husband." Again, she does not recognize him. 

So begins each and every day for Christine in S.J. Watson's imaginative novel, Before I Go to Sleep. When Christine faces Ben over breakfast, he has to tell her he is indeed her husband, they are very much in love, and that she was in a serious car accident that put her in a coma and took away her ability to retain memories. As her "first day" passes, she finds she is able to remember things that happen during day, but as she sleeps at night these memories are erased and she again has to re-meet Ben and learn of her past each and every morning. 

A phone call from a Dr. Nash informs her that she and the doctor have been meeting secretly to work on her memory loss. Dr. Nash is a local neuropsychologist who has given Christine a notebook to record anything during the day so she can read it and understand who she is and what she knows. Dr. Nash asks her to keep their visits and the notebook secret from Ben because her husband doesn't want Christine to go through any more heartbreaking experiences with doctors.

When every scrap of information about her life comes to Christine from strangers she just met, she begins to wonder who can she really trust? Christine feels Ben, in answering her questions, has not been telling the entire truth. Is he protecting her from further disturbance to their settled life? When confronted, he tells her the real story and she secretly writes it down in her notebook to consult the next day. But she also wonders whether Dr. Nash is all he claims to be as well. 

And where are her former friends from before the accident? And why has she written "Don't Trust Ben" on the opening page of her notebook? Questions, questions, and more questions every day from Christine make her even more confused. 

Watson has a gripping writing style in his stream of consciousness narrative from Christine's confused mind. We quickly grasp Christine's confusion, her fears, and her drive to understand who she and these people around her really are. As Christine repeatedly consults her journal to relearn about her past and present, she slowly adds new information about her life. Then, she too begins to keep secrets from various people.

Riveting right up to the final pages when the climax and truth are finally revealed, and she finally understands her past and future.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Shreve, Anita. Stella Bain

A woman wakes up in a French military field hospital during World War I with no memory of her identity or how she arrived in this situation. She painstakingly struggles to uncover her past and what the future hold for her. (previously reviewed here)

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir

McCracken, Elizabeth. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir. New York: Littleton, Brown. 2008. Print

First Sentences:

Once upon a time, before I knew anything about the subject, a woman told me I should write a book about the lighter side of losing a child.

(This is not that book.)

Description:

Discovering a new author can lead you to topics well outside your usual preferences as you glom onto every book which that author has written. You follow serendipitous pathways from one subject to another just to keep reading the words of a quality writer. Subject matter, to me, is always secondary to writing style and characters. If an author you enjoy writes it, you will come (and read it). 

Such an experience is now happening to me with Elizabeth McCracken, my newest favorite writer. After being fascinated by her book, The Giant's House, I have been reading everything else she has written (Niagara Falls All Over Again; Thunderstruck; Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry). 

Now I have completed An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir, about a topic I probably would not have explored except that McCracken had written about it. The subject? The stillbirth death of her first child, along with the events leading to that day and the recovery she and her husband undergo, culminating with the successful birth of her second child one year later.

The title gave me no hint as to its subject, although the intricate, confusing linkage of these words was intriguing to me, an unsuspecting reader. As any great writer does, she provides information in her first sentences to separate the sheep from the goat readers who are uncertain whether to continue reading. She seems to say, "This book is about the death of my baby, so keep reading or move on." For me, I was all in based on these in-your-face initial sentences and McCracken's previous triumphs in books. 

She engagingly details the intimate and sometimes funny story of her early single years, her love for her husband, and their life in an ancient French farmhouse.  McCracken and her husband, both authors, are living in rural France during her pregnancy and the delivery. During her pregnancy, they refer to their expected child "Pudding," originally a joke but it sticks and actually becomes the name they choose for the death certificate and coffin. McCracken's writes openly about her normal pregnancy full of joy, expectations, worries and hopes common to expectant parents ... right up to the moment when she learns her child is dead inside her, and she "stepped over the border from happy pregnancy to grief."

During an examination shortly before her due date, no heart beat could be heard inside the womb. Her thoughts at that moment are numbing, especially when she realizes she will still have to go through the delivery, knowing the result will be a dead baby. I cannot relate to you the kind of sadness she describes so clearly, so honestly, and so achingly final.

The memoir jumps back and forth between her life before, during, and after Pudding's death, including her second successful pregnancy. Because she foreshadows the stillborn delivery in the first sentences, she has no need to hide that event which permeates every memory. McCracken writes of incidents with her thoughts felt at those moments, as well as with the emotions she now has as she looks back with new irony and understanding. And such emotion she reveals to us:

The first thing we did back at Savary [their French farmhouse] was dismantle the future....Edward broke down the portable crib...I threw out all my maternity clothes...tossed out stuffed hippopotamus and any other toylike object....but not the baby clothes.

Who can separate practicality from hope from lingering superstition? We wanted another child. We wanted to fill those clothes.  

The anticipated autopsy report provides a new concern for McCracken. 

All summer long we'd waited for the autopsy results. I wanted to read them and I didn't want to read them. I was terrified that the verdict would say, essentially, Cause of death: maternal oblivion.... [The conclusion actually was] chorioamniotitis, with no known histological cause.

The book also provides an insightful look at the power words and actions have on someone who has experienced a calamity. Well-meaning people inquire about McCracken's baby and she finds explanations the hardest thing to do. She feels she needs a card similar to those passed out by deaf people asking for money.

When Pudding died, I wanted my stack [of cards]. My first child was stillborn, it would say on the front....I want people to know but I don't want to say it aloud. People don't like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card.... [I could give it to] every single person who noticed I was pregnant the second time, and said "Congratulations! It this your first?"

She notes that people can have a positive impact as well. As a cancer survivor I found I could identify with the power friends and family can have during one's struggle to deal with unexpected and overpoweringly sad circumstances.

Before Pudding died, I'd thought condolence notes were simply small bits of old-fashioned etiquette, important but universally acknowledged as inadequate gestures. Now they felt like oxygen, and only now do I fully understand why: to know that other people were sad made Pudding more real.

There is some unexpected humor as well. After hearing of the dead baby inside her, she is asked by a nurse, in French, whether they want "une nonne" (a nun). Her husband hears "Un nain" (a dwarf), so they later laugh at the concept that French hospitals have "Dwarfs of Grief" to comfort those who suffer a tragedy.

So how does a reader like me who enjoys Lee Child bloody thrillers, memoirs about prisons, humorous crime capers, sports histories, space exploration, and Tolkien get helplessly mixed up with a memoir of such sadness as the loss of a child? It's simple. McCracken is a highly skilled writer who can really tell a story with feeling and honesty, with personality and even self-deprecating humor. An Exact Replica has all my elements for a quality read: great writing, interesting characters, and a compelling story. I was led to this book because I simply wanted to read more by McCracken, but then found myself thoroughly engrossed and even able to relate to her descriptions of a world of hospitals, people, and sorrow.

McCracken recalls a sentence that keeps going through her mind: "This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending." I think these words perfectly describe this book. This memoir is not simply a terrible tragedy; it is story of a happy, normal woman encountering a harsh reality, painstakingly recording her thoughts, and then trying to move forward. You cannot simply "read" this book impassively; you are totally absorbed into her mind and actions, experiencing along side her every hope and trial. It is a powerful read about tragedy and hope.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

McCracken, Elizabeth. The Giant's House: A Romance

A fiercely independent, crotchety librarian takes a special interest in a young boy who is remarkably curious about information, books, and discussions. And he is a giant, growing to over 8' tall by age 18. (previously reviewed here)

Hitchens, Christopher. Mortality.

One man's personal thoughts on his battle with cancer. Very compelling reading to help readers understand what someone with this disease is feeling regarding his illness, how friends interact with him, care from his doctors, and his plans.

Diamond, John. Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.

Thoughtful, personal, and humorous account of John Diamond's long struggle with cancer as originally told through his column in the Times of London. Highly recommended along with the Hitchens' book for anyone who wants to know what having cancer is like. His words ring true to me as a fellow cancer patient. (previously reviewed here)

Halpern, Susan. The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can't Find the Words.

Excellent suggestions and practical applications for talking (or not talking) to people with illness: how to say what you want without causing offense or embarrassment, what they want you to say, when to just remain silent. Very valuable examples and advice for well-intentioned friends and family of patients of all ages and illnesses.

Mouth to Mouth

Wilson, Antoine. Mouth to Mouth. New York: Avid Reader 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

I sat at the gate at JFK, having red-eyed my way from Los Angeles, exhausted, minding my own business, reflecting on what I'd seen the night before, shortly after takeoff, shortly before sleep, something I'd never seen before from an airplane.


Description:

Reading Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson was a bit like overhearing a storytelling session with Shahryar, the fictional Persian king as he listened to Scheherazade tell her 1,001 tales to her little sister Dunyazad. Like Shahryar, Mouth to Mouth's unnamed narrator raptly listens to and records for us a long story told to him by a vaguely-remembered college acquaintance. 

 

The well-dressed storyteller, Jeff Cook, and the listening scruffy narrator have a chance meeting in the Los Angeles airport while waiting for their flight to New York. Over drinks and snacks in the first class lounge, Cook unravels a secret he has been carrying for years, one that completely changed his life.

 

Early one morning while walking on a California beach, he relates, Cook noticed a swimmer gesturing from the water, then not moving. He swam out to the man who was now floating face down, struggled to pull him to shore, and then, when he saw the swimmer was not breathing, administered a clumsy CPR, pushing on the swimmer's chest (breaking some ribs) and somehow blowing life back into the victim's blue lips.

 

After the swimmer is helped into an ambulance for the hospital, Cook, then a scraggly-looking figure, was ignored and forgotten by everyone at the scene. But as the swimmer was hauled off by EMTs, Cookthought he saw the victim make eye contact from the stretcher and even tried to wave to Cook with his strapped down arm. 

 

So what were Cook's next choices? Walk away as the anonymous do-good lifesaver? Or find the swimmer and introduce himself? And what did Cook really want? Recognition? Thanks? Money? He admits he was very confused until he decided to try to find the swimmer. 

He was not even sure why he was pursuing this course of action and what the consequences might be, but tracking down the swimmer became his goal. What followed after Cook found the swimmer is completely unpredictable, a wild ride of mystery, skulking around, love, art, and, of course, plenty of lies.

 

Early on, Cook had hinted to the listener that his life story was full of risky chances, missed opportunities, and decisions made that now are viewed with regret. The narrator once even asks Cook:

"If you [Cook] could zero out everything that got you here, to this moment, you really would?

He nodded

"Everything you've just told me about?"

"Without a second thought."

I was completely involved as the listener/narrator recorded Cook's long, sometimes sorrowful, often rambling tale about his past. At the end of each short chapter, I was anxious to hear more, just like Sharryar following Scheherazade's tales. What would happen next? Who else might become involved? What consequences would be faced by Cook and others in this chase after the swimmer? And how would it end? I was kept guessing until the very last sentence of the tale, a twist that makes Mouth to Mouth an even more deliciously-tempting read.

It's a quiet story, a mystery, a thriller, a love story, a series of questionable decisions, and a morality play about the pitfalls and consequences encountered in the pursuit of an all-encompassing  goal: to understand the truth about who the drowning swimmer was and Cook's ultimate role in his life.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley.   

A young man is hired to report on the activities of a wealthy man's son living in Italy. But Ripley begins to envy the son and becomes obsessed with a scheme to kill the rich son and take his place in the life of luxury.  (previously reviewed here)

 

 

Daikon

Hawley, Samuel. Daikon. New York : Avid Reader 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

Major Edward T. Houseman left his barracks tent at 8th Avenue and 125th Street -- the Columbia University district -- and headed down the crushed coral roadway in the direction of Times Square. It was eleven o"clock at night and a half-moon was rising, painting the island bluish gray. He passed a row of Quonset huts on his left, backed by miles of runways for the B-29s.


Description:

It's rare for me to find a book that completely satisfies all my criteria for a great book: strong characters, captivating plot, challenging setting, and wonderful writing. Daikon by Samuel Hawley is my most recent find. I'm so happy to share it with you.

 

Each of these four elements in Daikon (plot, characters, writing, setting) force you to keep going, paragraph after paragraph. You simply must find out what's going to happen next, what choices will the characters make, what obstacles, frustrations, triumphs, and dangers will they next face, what the outcomes will be, and how wil they and their world be affected. It's kind of like forcing yourself to watch a thriller movie from behind your fingers placed over your eyes. You have to find out, but you fear what you might see/read. In Daicon, it not a bloody scene you anticipate; it's the on-the-edge-of-your-chair outcome, whatever it might be, to every situation on every page.

 

Here's the scenario and a very brief intro to whet your interest. In the waning days of World War II, Japan's cities and population have been devastated by continual American and Allied bombings. Many in the Japanese government as well as among the people, are ready to surrender. Others, however, feel giving in would be the ultimate in humiliation and are prepared to rally a pro-Japan resurgence with similarly-minded people, including some military, even if it means overthrowing the Emperor and his government.

 

Through an accident, days before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an American plane crashes in Japan. It was on a mission to drop the first nuclear bomb on a Japanese city, the premier display of the bomb's power. After the American plane crash, this bomb falls into the hands of the Japanese. However, they are uncertain exactly what this odd-looking device actually is and what its use might be.

 

So how do the Japanese unwrap its secrets? Are there even any scientists left in their devastated country who might be able to decode this weapon? And ultimately what do the finders of this tool plan to do with it before Japan crumbles and surrenders?

 

The rest of the story focuses on the Japanese people involved with these challenges: a scientist, his wife, the army commander, and a lowly navy enlisted man. Together and separately, they embody Japan's dreams, skills, and dedication. What keeps you reading is trying to discover the outcome created by these people on the lost American bomb and possibly the War itself?

 

That's what will keep you up long into the night.

 

As you might sense, this is a special book, completely gripping on every level. You just cannot walk away from these fascinating, often ordinary, but committed characters as they face challenge after challenge.

 

Get it. Read it. And savor the storytelling skills of Samuel Hawley. Highest recommendation. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Conaway, Janes. American Prometheus 

Highly-detailed history of the United States' Manhattan Project, which was tasked to secretly develop, test, and make available, in a very short time span, an atomic weapon before the Germans do.

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Before the Fall

Hawley, Noah. Before the Fall. New York: Hatchette 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

A private plane sits on a runway in Martha's Vineyard, forward stairs deployed.

Description:

Maybe you still need a solid summer read for the upcoming chilly fall months. If so, I can recommend Noah Hawley's novel, Before the Fall, a quick, absorbing read about a mysterious plane crash and the passengers aboard. Hawley is a television writer and producer who created, among other shows, the devilishly-intricate and dark Fargo series

In the opening pages the small private plane loads up with two families who know each other through business, their children, a stranger invited at the last minute, and the crew. Moments later the plane and all passengers plummet into the sea. Only one adult and one child survive the crash in the huge ocean. [Not really a spoiler alert since the crash happens in the opening pages]. The adult becomes a reluctant international hero, but the child refuses to speak to anyone except his rescuer. Do either of them know anything about the crash or the other passengers that might explain the deaths of nine people?

The rest of the book examines each person on board the fated plane. Who are they? What are their individual lives like? Are any under some sort of pressure that might make them want to harm others aboard? Or maybe the crash was simply no one's fault, just an accident, a doomed plane fated to fall to pieces.

As in any great mystery story, each adult seems a likely suspect. Reader suspicions jump from character to character as motivations and lifestyles unfold. But it is not until the final pages that the mystery is finally solved.

It's a page-turning read, an engaging mystery full of interesting characters with secrets that culminate in the plane crash. Exactly the type of book to plop yourself down in a favorite chair and wile away some hours with a mug of something hot on a cold, cloudy winter afternoon.

Happy reading. 

Fred

(See more recommended books)
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Vendela, Vida. The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty. 

A woman traveling in the Middle East assumes the identity of another person via a found backpack she claims as her own. (previously reviewed here) 

Blue Latitudes

Horwitz, Tony. Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. New York: Holt. 2002. Print.

First Sentences:

When I was thirteen, my parents bought a used sailboat, a ten-foot wooden dory that I christened Wet Dream. 

For several summers, I tacked around the waters off Cape Cod, imagining myself one of the whalers who plied Nantucket Sound in the nineteenth century.

Description:

Author Tony Horwitz has a passion for Captain James Cook, the man who circumnavigated the world in a small wooden ship at a time when "roughly a third of the world's map remained blank, or filled with fantasies: sea monsters, Patagonian giants, imaginary continents." Horwitz decided to revisit the destinations written about by Cook during his three voyages, including stops in the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Hawaii, Tahiti, Terra del Fuego, and other far-flung destinations.

The result of his historical travels is Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, a rollicking voyage and encounters with the people and places of Captain Cook's travels. Using Cook's diaries for inspiration and historical background. Horwitz and his Australian friend, fellow sailor, and general lay-about Roger Williamson, fly to each of Cook's ports and wander the land looking for traces of Cook while gathering the current views about the explorer from locals.

To prepare himself for this travel, Horwitz first spent one week working as a common seaman on a replica of Cook's ship, Endeavour. This ship was currently taking a round-the-world voyage and allowing volunteers to spend time living, working, and eating as Cook's crew did in the 1700s. Even for a sailor, the experience for Horwitz was daunting from scaling masts during storms to trying to sleep in a tiny, rocking hammock. Throughout the trip, Horwitz provides us with comparisons to what Cook's men endured for years at a time on the original voyages.

Surviving this test, Horwitz and Williamson fly (rather than sail) to Cook's destinations. Horwitz is fascinated that Cook's missions were for scientific rather than personal goals. Cook had set out in 1769 to record data from the Transit of Venus celestial occurrence, search for a new continent (Australia), and seek out a Northwest Passage for ship travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. His voyages took years, weathering storms, shipwrecks, and unruly crews. Cook demonstrated his leadership time and again by making his men leave the promiscuous women and warm air of Tahiti for less desirable destinations of cannibals, cold weather, and other deprivations while also trying to communicate with Tahitians, Maoris, Hawaiians, and other natives who had never seen white men before. 

Horwitz and Williamson compare what they find at each location with entries from Cook's diaries and biographers' writings, noting the changes in population, landscape,and attitudes towards Cook. With much time on their hands between transportation, the two men are able to interview locals and historians, read original documents, and explore native customs - and drink the local brews, of course.

Blue Latitudes is a fascinating, detailed, thoroughly researched history of explorer/scientist Cook and the world and people of the late 1700s and the European Industrial Revolution. It is also a detailed commentary of the changes, both positive and negative, Cook's voyages brought to those destinations and our world today as revealed to two modern explorers.

Cook not only redrew the map of the world, creating a picture of the globe much like the one we know today; he also transformed the West's image of nature and man. 

[P.S. On a related note, the wreck of Cook's original ship Endeavour might have been discovered off the New England coast. It was intentionally sunk during the American Revolution. Here's a link to this discovery and the story of the ship's life after Cook's voyages.]

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Horwitz, Tony. A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America

Horwitz sets out to reenact the adventures of the Indians, explorers, and conquerors who set foot in the New World between 1492 and 1620, the era between the discovery by Columbus and the landing of the Pilgrims.

Queen of the Air

Dean, Jensen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus. New York: Crown. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

Firelight was entering the circus wagon through a narrow open door when Nellie woke.

The orange light was jumpy, flickering. It played over the walls of the roofed wagon and its collection of costumes, trunks, hoops, juggling balls, and other props. The air in the wheeled cabin was scented with woodsmoke and meadow grass.

Description:

To me, the circus presents a conflicting experience. On one hand, it is a magical world visually and sensually of animals, colors, smells, and lights, a world populated by fantastic beings with unusual talents and masterful presence. 

On the other hand, the behind-the-scenes workings of the circus can be disquieting, almost shameful. The circus brings together the exotic, the peculiar, the poverty-stricken outcasts and caged animals to perform before audiences eager to gape at them. It is a demanding environment, as performers and animals struggle to perfect unnatural, dangerous skills. But it also seems demeaning for elephants to dance on balls, obese sideshow figures to sit on stages waving, and trained dogs to run up ladders wearing dresses.

But oh, then there are the trapeze artists. Their grace, strength, and breath-taking daring make the circus an other-worldly experience. These men and women are "godlike, artists who consecrated their entire beings to their calling, and in some cases, even risked their lives for it," according to the painter John Steuart Curry, who travelled with and painted circuses in the 1930s.

Dean Jensen, former art critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel, has written three books on the circus. In Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus, he is at his best as a storyteller and researcher, bringing to life what really made up a circus and its inhabitants during the early 1900s.

Jensen focuses on the true stories of Lillian Leitzel and Alfredo Codona, the biggest stars ever to hit the circus world. Leitzel was a trapeze artist from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s, a wisp of a girl/woman who perfected a unique move: a one-armed swing as she hung from a single rope, jerking her body 50 - 100 times in head-over-feet revolutions, all performed 70' in the air without a net. 

Leitzel's mother, only 13 when Leitzel was born, was herself an international trapeze star. Nellie performed throughout Europe with the Leamy Ladies on the "Trapezone Rotaire," a circular arrangements of trapezes that revolved overhead, which was a stupendous sensation for audiences in the 1890s. Leitzel was left alone for years with her grandparents while her mother travelled. 

Leitzel started aerial performing at age three on a small pair of Roman rings and a trapeze bar. By age 11, she teamed up with her mother as a Leamy Lady on the Trapezone Rotaire. Their act was seen by John Ringling at a performance in Berlin's Wintergarden, and they were immediately booked to join the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth in America.

Leitzel became the most popular attraction in circus history, drawing huge crowds everywhere as the star. She eventually commanded her own train car, tent, and a salary of $1,200 per week from the Ringling Brothers, an unheard of amount in the 1920s when a good car cost $400. She continued to return to the European stages in the circus off season and even appeared on Vaudeville stages in America, performing her demanding routine many times a day year after year.

Alfredo Codona, the other star of the book, was also a trapeze artist, working with his brother as "The Flying Codonas" in small circuses in Mexico before tiny audiences. He became obsessed with perfecting the feat no other flyer had ever completed: the triple somersault. 

Once he actually achieved the triple and could perform it before audiences, his skill was noticed by the Ringling Brothers who signed him to their circus that featured Leitzel. The two stars, these magnetic personalities, now were thrown into the same star-crossed orbit. What happened to them next was both beautiful and shocking. 

Queen of the Air is a wonderful book. Jensen weaves a clear story with a descriptive narration that let readers intimately understand the world of the circus and their performers. We lucky readers can breathe the big top air, watch the performances, feel the tension, and cheer the successes. We get to know and understand the motivations of these unique performers as well as the managers of the circus and the audiences who worship the stars. 

It is a gripping, fantastical tale of two people and the circus world they dominated as god-like stars. In Jensen's words:

"The story of Leitzel and Alfredo was the greatest one the big top has ever had to tell. They presided over an ever-relocating sawdust-and-rainbows-made Camelot where, one after another, wonderments kept occurring. Their love story was epic. Had it played out in the ancient world instead of the first third of the twentieth century, it might have been presented on the stage by Sophocles. Their story moved in the arc of a Greek tragedy, and, I believe, was complete with mischievous fates and vengeful gods." 

Who can resist a story as big and as personal as this? Certainly not me, and I hope not you either. It is wonderful.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jensen, Dean. The Biggest, the Smallest, the Longest, the Shortest: A Chronicle of the American Circus from Its Heartland

True look at the world of circuses, performers, and animals.

Helfer, Ralph. Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived 

True account of a relationship between an elephant and his friend/trainer over seven decades, from surviving a shipwreck together to performing in circuses worldwide.

Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants 

Recollections of a 90-year-old man about his wildly varied experiences with the circus. Wonderfully written and a great fictional story.

City of Windows

Pobi, Robert. City of Windows. New York: Minotaur. 2019. Print

First Sentences:
 

Nimi Olsen made the mistake of trying to cross Forty-second half a block before the intersection and missed the light.

 

She was now stranded on the spine of frozen slush that snaked down the middle of the street, freezing her ass off. Cars snapped by with homicidal vigor, and every few seconds a mirror brushed her hip. 

Description:

I confess to a certain addiction to thrillers, especially when they involve police procedures. I'm not a fan of gratuitous, bloody violence (although with Scandanavian authors, I seem to be more willing to compromise). 

So it is with great enthusiasm that I recommend Robert Pobi's City of Windows, an almost bloodless series of murders investigated by a astrophysicist who doesn't carry a gun. The murders, and yes, there are killings, are conducted with one shot only, by a shooter using a long-range rifle from over 700 yards away. The target is dead before the sound reaches any observers. The victims seem to be random selections, and of course the shooter is long gone by the time the police can even guess which window the shot came from.

Enter former FBI agent Lucas Page, a university professor who left the service after an "incident" left him with a prosthetic leg and arm. But he still retains a unique ability of seeing the world and situations broken down into geometric patterns, angles, and makeup. He is reluctantly recalled into service because the first shooting victim was his former partner.

Page pokes around, digging into files, looking for some connection between the targets before another person can fall to a long-range head shot. But the trail is cold and the victims keep falling, forcing Page to enlist help from unusual sources: computers and small town people who hate government intervention into matters best left in the past.

I loved this book because, while there are people being shot, it is relatively bloodless. No eyeball gouging, no street fights, no stabbings, and certainly no gun battles. Just someone picking off victims, eluding FBI and Page throughout the book. There are hints to solving this, but they are very subtle - until Page starts to see the light.

So if you are fan of nail-biting suspense crime stories, even ones that involve murders, but might be a bit hesitant to leap into another book with over-the-top violence, then City of Windows is for you. 

P.S. There are now two other Lucas Page novels, Under Pressure and Do No Harm I just finished reading both of them and can eagerly recommend each of these twisty, thoughtful serial murders. Best to read them in order, starting with City of Windows. He's just a great character trying to untangle complex, unsolvable cases, exactly the scenario I enjoy.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Child, Lee. One Shot.   

Five random people are shot on a public street in only a few seconds by a person using a long-range rifle. The police make a quick arrest based on the evidence found. But the  prisoner claims innocence and ask for Jack Reacher, former Army MP, to investigate. Breath-taking in its thoroughness of investigation, thrills, and toughness. Another great one from Lee Child.

Looking for Alaska

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York: Dutton 2005. Print.

First Sentences:

The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party

To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically.

Description:

If you are seeking a travel book, don't bother with John Green's Looking for Alaska. Despite its title, this coming-of-age novel has nothing to do with the fiftieth state, but instead refers to a teenage female student named "Alaska" (she was allowed to choose her own name by her parents) and her small circle of friends at a private boarding school in Alabama.

Alaska Young is a free spirit, full of life, pranks, and off-beat thoughts. But she also has a darker side where she refuses to answer any questions beginning with "Who, What, Where, When, Why, or How." She drinks and smokes in secret too much, falls asleep at the drop of a hat, and can be outrageously insulting at times. But her fascinating curiosity and energy drives her and her friends to new heights in conversation and actions.

Her gang includes the book's narrator, Miles Hatter, nicknamed "Pudge" for his skinniness; Pudge's roommate Chip, nicknamed "the Colonel" for his intricately organized pranks and his memory of facts from the world almanac and dictionary; and Takumi, who has no nickname but is privately in love with Alaska. But then again, so is Pudge along with most other male students at Culver Creek school.

The foursome sits around discussing school, books, pranks, fellow students, and life. And that's about it. Maybe that sounds boring, but it's brilliantly written and realistically portrayed by all four characters, so it rolls along splendidly.

Chapters are curiously titled, one hundred twenty-eight days before, two days before, etc. and then, twenty-seven days after. Of course, that means there is a significant event half-way through the book that changes all their lives. What happens? Well, you will just have to read Green''s novel.

Looking for Alaska is a bit A Separate Peace, some The Catcher in the Rye, and part Brewster (one of my favorite schoolmates coming-of-age books). Green, the best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars and the new Turtles All the Way Down, captures the thoughts and worries of teenagers perfectly in the privacy of their dorm rooms, how they plan to attack life and those who oppose their sensibilities, and what activities are worthwhile to pursue.

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

It is a fine peek into the minds and lives of friends living through the challenges and joys of their teenage years. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Slouka, Mark. Brewster  

Four teens find each other and band together in friendship during their trouble high school years. Brilliant. (previously reviewed here)

Knowwles, John. A Separate Peace  

Two teenage boys, one outstandingly popular and athletic, the other introverted and scholarly, bond together in friendship at an exclusive boarding school after World War II....until a tragedy occurs under mysterious circumstances that affects both their lives. A classic.