A Sister to Honor

Wow. I had a hard time putting this book down, I was so interested in what would happen next. Much of it was surprising, disturbing, and thought-provoking.

This novel by Lucy Ferris is the story of Afia and Shahid Satar, two young Pakistanis from a good family who have come to America to study. Shahid is the squash star, Afia the smart girl who will train to be a doctor, and then go home to Pakistan to treat women. Shahid has vowed to keep his sister protected from Western immodesty and immorality, but when a picture of her surfaces on the internet - holding hands with an American boy - a chain of events is set in motion that could ruin both of them, and their family back in Pakistan.

This is an intriguing story about honor, tradition, and the changes taking place in the Muslim world. Afia is an interesting character, modest but strong-willed, obedient and rebellious at the same time. She is being torn apart by her responsibility to her family and her sense of honor, in opposition to her desire to fit in and find her place in the West. She may be one of the strongest female characters I've come across in a long time, and her story is fascinating.

A Sister to Honor

Becoming Marie Antoinette

I thoroughly enjoyed Juliet Grey's take on the young Maria Antonia, Archduchess of Austria, married off to the French Dauphin Louis Auguste at the tender age of fourteen. Grey obviously has great affection for her main character, and she turns someone who is typically a one-dimensional historical character into a three-dimensional, likeable young woman.

I admit I know next to nothing about Marie Antoinette, born Maria Antonia into the Austrian (Hapsburg) dynasty - a dynasty famous for marrying for power rather than going to war. In order to be acceptable to the French, she goes through all sorts of preparation, both educational and physical (the description of 18th century braces is horrifying). Once she arrives in France, she is overwhelmed by a French court that was almost nothing like she expected, where courtiers urinate in the hallways and fight for the honor of handing her her nightgown. That the dauphin is more interested in hunting and cabinet-making than in getting a baby on his new wife makes her even more miserable in her new home.

It takes Marie Antoinette a while to figure out the intrigues of the French court, which is so very different from the less showy and more morally upright court of Austria. But she eventually finds her way, and she and Louis Auguste come to be friends, and more.

I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Becoming Marie Antoinette

The Alchemist's Daughter

I by turns liked and cringed at this historical novel by Katharine McMahon, the story of Emilie Selden, who we first meet as a girl at her father's isolated estate. Raised by her father in his image as a natural philosopher and alchemist during the 18th century, a time when women rarely received such an education, Emilie sadly lacks any knowledge of people and the wider world. Therefore it is no surprise that the first handsome man from London who comes along (when she's a very young 19) sweeps her off her feet and onto her back in the woods in no time.

Of course they marry, and Emilie goes with him to London where she sees how little she knows of anything that's useful for survival in her husband's rich/tawdry/immoral world. After her father dies and she and her husband inherit the estate, she finds out even more about herself and the world in which she was raised, a world that she never really saw in it's true light.

Emilie was a difficult character for me, sometimes witty and likeable, sometimes incredibly selfish. Book smart - but not literary - and often without any regard for the impact of anything on anyone except herself. But McMahon's writing is beautiful, and she evokes a real Gothic feeling that made the novel hard to put down.

The Alchemist's Daughter