Essleigh Ekstrom

What murderous antisemitism first looks like

Reviewed: 02-28-24

Subtle and insightful, this WW2 novel has plenty of sex for the romantics, but pays off - eventually - for the history buffs. Her insights about the very beginnings of genocide, and how most people really don't want to admit it, play out against a fast-paced plot with sunny days in Monte Carlo, moonlit nights in Paris and Florida, and very memorable characters. Charming and gripping.

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Sisters Spy Story Based on a Fascinating Time

Reviewed: 09-11-23

Fresh new take on the Spy thriller plot with wonderful character development, and moving family crises, in the US, in Europe, and in Russia. I was completely entertained by the narrators' versatility and consummate skill. The little romance there is, is not simple and fast, if that's your thing. I didn't see the end coming and I'm reasonably intelligent and well-read: I enjoyed every twist. For the first time ever I want to read about the Cambridge spies. But if I don't, I will be turning over this particular bit of history in my mind for a while. Thank you to the writer for (re-)creating this world so very very well!

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nearly fell off the rowing machine laughing

Reviewed: 03-22-22

These two are geniuses, plus so very smart. This one is especially good for anyone who's ever performed in awful little places or situations. thank you thank you for doing this

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Truly amazing and unexpected.

Reviewed: 04-09-21

What do i know about Iran? Almost nothing. But this beautiful play opened the lives of Iranian women to me in a completely unexpected way. Thank you to everyone involved!

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1 person found this helpful

Spectacular! I've been waiting so long for this

Reviewed: 12-06-19

A beautifully produced, dazzling conversation between brilliant minds who both happen to be women. And who are talking about the joy of discovery — NOT men, except in passing. I've been waiting my whole life for this, and honestly it feels like the world is cracking open. Finally the truth of who women are, to science, to each other, to their children, to their partners, is making it into a media that has been 99.9% by, for, and about men. I remember seeing Einstein at the Lapin Agile in SF in 1997 and being wild about its approach...but like every other produced play it didn't include the particular way women approach knowing, and doing, and inventing. Thank you to everyone involved in this moving, brilliant project...and when, oh when, can I see this play on the West Coast?

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8 people found this helpful

Patriarchy in action, destroying everyone's lives

Reviewed: 10-14-19

Power: in the 1950s world of Jewish immigrants in London, the wealthy older Iranian man (who, strangely, lives off his very poor in-laws) decides to take the ultimate revenge on his child wife's uppity mother ("the real bitch," as he says) by kidnapping her grandchildren, her daughter's children. His self-righteous anger doesn't apply to the man in the household, who has confronted him about not supporting his children. No, his anger focuses only on the women, and how do you take revenge on people who are already powerless (women in the 1950s)? You take away the one thing that women value above all else: their children. Even if you, the man, don't really want them yourself.

It's a not-unusual story for the time period, or even now. What makes it interesting are the actual voices of people involved, still alive. But there are so many power and consent and legal issues here that the author oddly doesn't make an effort to put into context. He really seems almost clueless about gender and power and consent.

For just one item: a 21-year-old wealthy man pursuing and impregnating a barely 15-year-old poor girl would now be recognized as a predator. This never comes up in the program.

And this teenage mother DID pursue her lost children, the only way she knew how to do at the time, through a community organization, which ultimately did nothing. Would the police have done anything for her, a poor, husbandless female? The Iranian Embassy? as someone suggested. Flying to Iran and hunting them down...What a laugh! These were poor people who probably never left their London neighborhood. Most importantly, the father had all the legal rights at the time. Why doesn't Moshe do this research? This seems like a huge miss on his part.

Yes it is frustrating to hear his mother now be so accepting of her children's fate (and this "just get on with it" is also SO typical of WWII British, plus this community has just escaped the Holocaust), but as Moshe demonstrates, she wasn't accepting: she simply expressed it in the way that the powerless do: severe depression for years.

My own grandmother, who remarried after her sons' father publicly disowned them and left them in poverty, found out after her wedding that her wealthy new husband just didn't want to raise her two children. He decided they would be left with the grandparents. Legally, it was his decision! She died of heartbreak (or possibly abuse) within a year, and my father and his brother were orphaned in the 1940s. This is what used to happen all the time, we are just beginning to hear the stories, and therefore judging them out of context is wrong.

This is the patriarchy in action, destroying the lives of everyone, boys, girls, women and men.

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Luxury's sharp edge plus even sharper love stories

Reviewed: 11-30-18

Such a compelling portrait of beautiful, brutal America! What would happen if you got to luxuriate in a one-percenter's little folly, but weren't one of them? Who do you, and your integrity, become when something goes wrong? The newest novel from the fiercely intelligent Kate Christensen (one of this country's most consistently interesting writers) gives us several unlikely heroes who are just like us: smart, talented women and men struggling to survive in the new America and the turbulent wake of international corporate power.

The turquoise waters are delightful, but like anything in excess they also hide danger and despair. The tension here is not mortal: it is, like all of Christensen's books, moral. And so wonderfully complex. She refuses to deal in easy stereotypes: no one is simply good or bad. She lures us into this cruise with a delightfully stylish premise, all exquisite food and glamorous settings and vivid characters. Then she turns it all on its head to follow the money. And while chaos threatens, she deftly develops two of the most memorable romances I've ever enjoyed.



The narrator is very good, for male voices. I've given only 4 stars simply because there were so many interesting female characters, of all ages, that I found myself longing for a female voice, or at least a less rumbly male voice.

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1 person found this helpful

Ever wondered what it takes to be a Saint?

Reviewed: 07-02-17

What did you love best about Kristin Lavransdatter?

Being consistently surprised at how every character who initially seemed to be predictable became in the long run a fascinating and sometimes exasperating portrait of temperament and complexity. This is a writer who plays the long game masterfully; her Nobel made total sense to me after finishing. I very much enjoy being surprised as a reader, whether by an unusual interpretation (such as a female Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet Women), unexpectedly touching friendships in the midst of a romp (Gail Carriger's Soulless series), or now this Norwegian "Catholic novel" of the 1920s, which my non-religious self found ultimately quite fascinating.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Do I really need to even wonder about a favorite? No, the book is far too complex for such a simplistic question. There is a wide cast of alternately interesting and maddening characters. No one was either all good or all evil. A reader could find that Kristin herself is either flawed and saintly; or martyr-like in the most annoying way. Above all, the writer sees and loves humanity in all its complexity, and took the time to write about them in such intriguing depth. She probably took years or even decades to do so, with patience and without judging them for their failings (or at least offering other explanations for their failings).

What about Erin Bennett’s performance did you like?

Like the author, Ms. Bennet plays an amazing long game. 48 hours of consistently measured but passionate narration. She never overwhelmed the story, and her voices never made me cringe; on the contary, they often were very appealing. Her voicing of Kristin came the closest to being annoying, but I think that was intentional: the character is so self-consciously pious that Bennet's rendition was spot-on, if sometimes a little off-putting.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

So many. These people are so filled with human failings, and do sometimes outrageous things, and yet they overwhelmingly struggle to find their way back towards a moral center. If that sounds pretentious, it really isn't in the book. They struggle the same way Sherlock Holmes struggles, or Zadie Smith's characters struggle, or even "zany" Christopher Moore's characters try not to go completely off whatever edge they're teetering on.

Any additional comments?

When I recommended this book to my spiritual but 20-something friend, he laughed and said he would never read it, too many negatives: Norwegian, 14th century, Catholic, LONG, etc. I think if he ever gave it a good try (say, 20 hours or so) he might change his mind and find it fascinating. First, as the overwhelming popularity of TV series implies, few of us want to see a good story end. And so much of Kristin Lavransdatter is relevant to 2017 (men responding almost mystically to men who act like "Chieftains", for example); it is a wonderful, patient writer's deep look into a patriarchal Scandinavian world through the eyes of a stubborn woman who never manages to disengage from her bloody, chaotic world, even as she tries to give it up entirely while still living (through a path clearly laid out by one religion's sometimes almost unbelievably harsh guidelines).

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29 people found this helpful

Inexplicable sequel to a truly phenomenal book

Reviewed: 07-31-15

Would you try another book from Kate Atkinson and/or Alex Jennings?

I was stunned by the slow-building deep philosophical questions in Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (a very accurate title). It was not a shallowly exciting novel; rather, it gradually drew me in and captured my allegiance and my admiration. When I saw there was a sequel I immediately downloaded it. The story was too much of the quite boring life of a charming side character in LAL. And the reader, I have to say, really poisoned the tone of the novel, delivering much of the character's voices as whiny or just false, and much of the narration as snide. If you desire a novel which seems to paint all people other than well-educated but pure-at-heart English men and women as simpletons, this would be a good one for you to enjoy. I am frankly puzzled by both the novel and the positive reviews. I wish I could recapture the glow of Life After Life and leave it at that.

Has A God in Ruins turned you off from other books in this genre?

Definitely not.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Alex Jennings?

Someone who knows the difference between confident and snide.

What character would you cut from A God in Ruins?

not applicable

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4 people found this helpful

So Subtly Menacing it's Almost a Thriller

Reviewed: 05-18-10

The tension in this wonderful novel builds exquisitely slowly. The writer never once hits the reader over the head with a conclusion, but always allows us to feel it ourselves. This is the best evocation of 1960s Southern America I've ever read, because it focuses on the completely unspoken rules that govern every aspect of behavior between the races. And unspoken rules, of course, cannot be legislated away. Stockett's characters are heartbreaking in their everyday compassion, frustration, mercy and cruelty. How does change really begin to happen? Listen to this beautifully narrated story and find out.

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1 person found this helpful