Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

fiction

A Truly “Delicious!” Book

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The reading gods are continuing to smile upon me as I work through a trove of novels that are absolutely wonderful! I don’t often get a streak like this, and many times so-called must reads don’t flip my button at all.

This week’s selection is Delicious! A Novel by Ruth Reichl. This is her first novel, but she’s written a lot about food in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. She’s published non-fiction books as well, and I’m now eager to read all of them! So it makes sense that her first novel would be about, well, food.

Billie Breslin is a young woman with a perfect palette who doesn’t cook. We don’t know why, though I promise, all will be revealed. She has dropped out of college to take a job at Delicious!, a food magazine.

As Billie struggles to create a life for herself far from family, she builds a friendship with Sal and his wife Rosalie, making his cheese shop her second home. Then there’s Sammy, the eccentric and fabulous travel writer, and Jake, the owner of the magazine. Oh, and let’s not forget Mr. Complainer, a regular customer of Sal’s!

It’s hard to write more without adding a lot of spoilers, so I’ll just add that there’s a whole subplot devoted to certain letters addressed to James Beard, who in this novel once ran Delicious!. These letters, and the story that is revealed from them, are in my opinion the meat of the book.

Billie’s past will break your heart. But along the way, there is a lot of joy, friendship, and community, plus the smells and tastes of food that will make you hungry while you read. Yes, there are recipes at the end.

Introducing Jane

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My great-great grandmother, Jane Thorburn, worked in the woollen mills of Scotland as a weaver. Here’s what I know about her: she was the oldest child of a coal miner and his wife. By the age of eight she was no longer living with the family, presumably to go to work (though I don’t know for sure). She fell in love with Robert Stein. Together they had a child, my great-grandfather Hugh, who came to America.

And I know when and how she died, though that would be too much of a spoiler alert.

Due to circumstances, she disappeared from the family tree until I stumbled across her in 2014 after doing some genealogy.

Now, I do not consider myself a great genealogist, or even a good one. I tip my hat to those who are. Their persistence and attention to detail is something to be admired!

I am too wired to be a fiction writer. For example, I discovered that a Stein family in that part of Scotland were involved in bad whisky making (and yes, that’s how whisky is spelled in Scotland). My imagination ran wild with all the possibilities.

Then, *ahem*, a distant relative gently suggested that there were no known links to this particular Stein family. I say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, but that’s not good genealogy behavior.

I’ve been obsessed with Jane ever since. Factory Girl, or whatever I end up calling the darn thing (turns out there are multiple novels of that name), is going through the editing process. As I tried to tease out what Jane’s life might have been like, a group of fairies showed up and I had to deal with them, too. It’s meant reading old Scottish folk tales.

I’m grateful to have found an editor who lives in Scotland and who has even walked the Alva Glen where the old mill once stood, and where Jane, in my story, escaped to be in nature. With her loving care, the story is shaping up nicely, and she is undaunted by the sheer weirdness of this work. It’s outside of anything I’ve ever tried to do before. I am excited and freaked out at the same time.

Look for excerpts soon!

A Writer’s Life is Many Lives #WDC18 #amwriting

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As I come off this year’s Writer’s Digest Conference, I am thinking about how fortunate I am. I get to do work that I love, and when I spend time around other writers, I am among incredibly generous and supportive people. As author Steven James said during his “Story Trumps Structure” workshop, we are in a rare business where people who could be our “competition” come and share everything they know. He likened it to Apple going to Google and sharing all their secrets.

The magic, of course, is that there is  no competition. Each of us has a unique story to tell, so the more of us the merrier. We don’t have to elbow anyone out of the way.

Back home, I am once again immersed in my projects. For one, I am reading about artists, particularly female and self-taught. Think Grandma Moses as one of many examples. I’m also learning to draw and watercolor. I’m not doing this because I want a new hobby, though I suspect I’ll keep at it because it’s fun. No, it’s a way to understand my main character better.

While I continue my research for that novel, I am living (in my mind) in late 19th-century Scotland. This story idea has sent me to Scotland twice and the old mills of Lowell, Massachusetts; introduced me to proletarian novelists such as Elizabeth Gaskell (think contemporaries of Dickens); and introduced me to genealogy.

When I wrote What She Knew, I studied the victims and perpetrators of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. I was fascinated with the movers and shakers of Wall Street and what would happen if one of them actually grew a conscience.

In short, as a writer I get to live many lives. I get to play dress up and try on new identities. I get to peer inside the heads of my characters, who I grow to love as if they are real people and real friends.

This is a good life. A happy life. A fulfilled life. Last week I met a lot of wonderful writers who share this journey with me, and I am looking forward to getting to know all of you better.

 

Writer Updates #amwriting #womensfiction

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I continue to read, read, read, but I am refilling my well with new books. Not to worry, there are plenty of good ones out there! No doubt next week I’ll be back to share my latest good reads.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share an update on my own work.

I’m revising two separate projects, both of them very different, and I’m having a wonderful time! First is Factory Girl, set in late nineteenth-century Scotland. Though the inspiration for the book is my great-great grandmother, Factory Girl includes a fairy rebellion as well! It wasn’t my intention, but they showed up in my story, and I decided to let them stay.

The other is untitled as yet. It’s a contemporary women’s fiction work about Elaine, a 60-year-old woman who has been the rock, support, and head cheerleader for her family, but who now wants to explore her own dreams. With a husband who has decided to jump into politics and a daughter who drops off the grandson without much notice, Elaine is meeting a fair amount of resistance! There’s also a handsome art teacher and an untrustworthy friend in the mix. I just finished the second draft, so this may take a while, but it’s a promising project.

Meanwhile, we continue to try to sell our home in the Pacific Northwest so we can move full-time to the East Coast. So far, the market is oddly quiet, so our move date remains uncertain. But these are good problems to have! In the meantime we’re enjoying a summer that is generally mild and pleasant (with the exception of air quality — we’re affected by fires in British Colombia), and I’m getting lots of yummy fruit from the garden.

See you next week!

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Nadine’s latest novel, What She Knew, is available on Amazon.

The Butterfly Garden #bookreview #fiction

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What a sweet title! One would expect a lovely story about a group of women sipping tea in a butterfly garden. Yet this butterfly garden is unlike any other. This garden is created by a serial killer who decorates his young, lovely victims with butterfly tattoos.

I’m not even sure why I bought The Butterfly Garden. I always read the descriptions and it’s unlike me to purchase something so grisly and disturbing. But I’m glad I did.

Author Dot Hutchison begins the story in a police station where a young woman called Maya is being questioned. Maya is a tough young woman who isn’t exactly forthcoming at the beginning, so there is some question as to whether she is somehow complicit in a series of gruesome murders performed by a man known only as The Gardener. Drip by drip, word by word, she tells the story of the Garden and the young women in it: women The Gardener kidnapped, tattooed, killed, and preserved because butterflies have a short life span.

The Gardener has a lot of contradictions. He can be charming, loving even. In fact, everything he does is out of love, even when he’s at his most twisted and brutal.

The interplay between Maya and the detectives, Hanoverian and Eddison, helps bring the story to life. Through the telling of the story, we learn more about these detectives and what motivates them to continue working in a field that can be exhausting, frustrating, and draining. Since The Butterfly Garden is the first in a series, one presumes we will continue to follow the detectives in future books.

This type of story normally isn’t my cup of tea, but I have to say I liked it very much. Maya emerged from her cocoon, as it were, as the story unfolds, and I found myself aching for the lost years (and lives) of these fictional characters.

Vertical: Passion and Pinot on the Oregon Wine Trail

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If you loved the novel Sideways by Rex Pickett or saw the movie of the same name, you know the story of Miles, a frustrated novelist, and his devil-may-care buddy Jack. In Sideways, Miles and Jack go on a road trip to explore the California Wine Country. Jack’s about to get married and wants a wild week before he hangs up his bachelor shoes. Miles, down and out two years after a divorce, just wants to drink wine and play golf. Jack manages to create chaos wherever he goes. The strength of Sideways is this friendship between opposites. Sideways is one of my favorite movies and stays true to the book.

Vertical: Passion and Pinot on the Oregon Wine Trail brings back Miles and Jack for another road trip, this time to Oregon. Miles has found success as a novelist and is riding a wave of fame after a successful movie version. He’s getting paid big bucks to talk at wine conventions, and women are throwing themselves at him. Yes, he and Maya have broken up — something that made me not want to read this book. However, Pickett handles the situation well, and Maya makes a few appearances in Vertical. I ended up forgiving Pickett for this and agreeing with him that it’s the right move for both characters.

With all the free wine, Miles is also making a fool of himself and becoming a caricature. He’s all too aware that he’s not working on his next book. Those of us who write and get distracted from our work can relate!

Jack’s marriage has fallen apart, and so has his acting career, and he’s now bumming money from Miles. Miles gets the idea they should go on the road together — Miles has speaking commitments in Oregon. He wants to pick up his mother, who has been living in assisted living post-stroke, and take her to Wisconsin after the Oregon gigs to live with her sister.

As with the first book/movie, all the characters manage to get into some hilarious scrapes. Jack is as outrageous as ever. Underneath the mayhem, though, this is a more serious book. All of the characters except for Mom’s nurse are descending deeper and farther into alcoholism, and there are a number of cringeworthy moments courtesy of Miles’ favorite grape, Pinot.

This is really a story about a mother and son whose relationship has never been close. Near the end of her life, she and Miles are really just getting to know each other. There’s a sense Miles might finally grow up — though we don’t know that for sure (there’s a third book, so I’m withholding judgment). There is a lot of heartbreak along with the humor.

If I were conducting a novel-writing class, I could find a lot wrong with this story. It could be better edited and in particular, Pickett’s overuse of clunky adverbs is a distraction (hypochondriacally, as an example). However, he’s a good storyteller, with an ability to create empathy for characters who by all rights, we shouldn’t like very much. I spent many years around alcoholics, so this is no small accomplishment. And readers who aren’t writers, who don’t know all the “rules” of writing a novel, most likely won’t care. I still wanted to turn the page.

If you like wine, or if you like Miles and Jack as I do, you’ll enjoy this book. Flawed as it is, there’s a lot to love about it.

NOTE: This book is a rerelease. It’s been revised and updated, and some of its original fans are not happy with the changes. Since I didn’t read that version, I cannot comment. I was provided a copy of this book in return for a fair review.

 

Nadine Galinsky Feldman is the author of What She Knew and The Foreign Language of Friends, as well as the nonfiction When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope.