I recently re-read The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger. It's the book my synagogue book club is discussing this month for a Holocaust Remembrance observance. I read it last spring and wanted to refresh my mind before leading the discussion (or participating in the discussion). I'd gotten it as an Amazon Prime First Read, enjoyed it and thought it would make for a good, slightly different discussion.

After I reread The Star and the Shamrock, I immediately purchased the sequel, The Emerald Horizon, and quickly devoured that one. I think I found The Emerald Horizon a more satisfying read and truthfully, I think that this book would make for a better discussion, but only if The Star and the Shamrock is read first.

In The Star and the Shamrock, Ariella Bannon puts her children, Liesl and Erich, on the Kindertransport out of Germany. She's connected with her missing husband's cousin in England. Cousin Elizabeth will take the children off the train and will care for them until Ariella is able to be with them again. The Star and the Shamrock is about Ariella's difficult decision and the life the children come to have with Elizabeth - first in England and eventually in  Northern Ireland. It's primarily the story of Elizabeth, Liesl and Erich. We don't learn much more about  Ariella or what is happening to her back in Germany.

The Emerald Horizon picks up where The Star and the Shamrock left off. The sequel has two storylines going. We learn about Ariella's life during the war as we continue to learn about the children's lives in Ireland at the end of the war. Ireland at the end of the war is a place of uncertainty for the children of the Kindertransport as they wonder the fate of their families left behind in their home countries and what that will mean for their futures. Berlin at the end of the war remains an extremely dangerous place. Germany might have surrendered but conditions are still grim and it is impossible to know who can be trusted.

Of course what drives Ariella forward is the determination to be reunited with her children. That is something I can definitely relate to.

Grainger keeps adding books to The Star and the Shamrock series. Currently, there are two more novels. Each was declared to be the last in the series so who knows what might be coming. The Hard Way Home is about Liesl's university years and The World Starts Anew which picks up Erich's story in the 1950s. I'm on the fence about whether I'll read on, but I would highly recommend the first two novels in the series.

Postscript

In 2005, I read a novel by a very young author called P.S. I Love You. Cecelia Ahern created the story of Holly whose husband, Gerry, had the forethought to write 12 letters to Holly, with the direction to read one letter a month for the first year of her death.

In Postscript, we meet up with Holly again, 7 years after Gerry's death. She's in a relationship with Gabriel. She's working for her sister, Ciara, at her eclectic resale shop. Her life seems to be in a good place.

Holly's sister asks Holly to participate in a podcast, telling people the story of Gerry's letters. Unbeknownst to her, one of Holly's sister's benefactors at her shop, Angela, is dealing with her own death and starts the P.S. I Love You Club. It's a club where terminally ill patients come together to create a legacy for their loved ones similar to the one that Gerry created for Holly. The P.S. I Love You Club wants to meet with Holly.

Gabriel thinks that her joining the club is going to take her backwards at a time when she should continue her move forward. Her family is more on the fence. Holly reluctantly agrees to meet with the club after she learns of Angela's death. Over time, she's drawn in and agrees to help the remaining members.

You'd think a book about dying people and death would be depressing, but it was really uplifting. Holly helped the terminally ill folks navigate their P.S. I Love You projects, making sure to be true to their personalities and what they jointly believe that their loved ones need. The club members learn about themselves as Holly learns more about the woman she has become since the time that Gerry died.

I loved Holly's family and her friends, Sharon and Denise, even though I don't remember them from the first novel. In fact, I don't remember much about the first novel. But I think I appreciated Postscript as much as I did because I totally remembered the gist of P.S. I Love You. 

Now that I'm much older, I don't always find books with young protagonists engaging. But I really enjoyed this one. I'd highly recommend Postscript.

Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

I don't even recall requesting Nine Folds Make A Paper Swan by Ruth Gilligan, but apparently I did. One day I got an email saying that it had been checked out of the library for me. I can only presume that I read about it in an email from the Jewish Book Council and put it on hold. I'm so glad I did. What an interesting book!

The novel is written in a somewhat unique, somewhat frustrating way. There are three seemingly disparate and disconnected stories being told. One is the story of Ruth, a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant who left with her family in the early 1900s for New York - but wound up Cork, Ireland instead. Then there's the story of Shem, a mute Jewish teenager who is keeping his mother's secret, which takes place in the late 1950s. And finally, there is the contemporary story of Irish Catholic Aisling who is contemplating taking a leap of faith for her Jewish boyfriend.

Initially, due to the way the stories unfold, it was confusing. Then I decided to just go with it, not torturing myself trying to figure out how the stories might eventually connect. For that, I was rewarded by a very interesting read. I knew virtually nothing about the struggles of the Jewish community in Ireland. In fact, I really never even considered that their might have been a Jewish community in Ireland. In addition, I picked up a little bit of Irish history to boot. And I was satisfied with the ending.

I'd highly recommend this book.

Chestnut Street

I discovered Maeve Binchy as an adult. I was terribly saddened by her death in 2012. I consoled myself by knowing that I while I'd read all of Binchy's more recent novels, I hadn't read a few of her earlier ones. (To this day, I still have not read Light A Penny Candle, her first published book.

Most of Binchy's stories are set in Ireland and revolve around relationship and family issues. My favorite novel is most probably Evening Class, followed by the rest of the novels that are connected to that one. The characters and locales overlap, but the connected novels are not in any way a series.

A little over a year ago, when I was between books, searching through the online e-book catalog, I discovered Chestnut Street. Chestnut Street is a collection of short stories, all set on the same street in Dublin. Binchy would write a short story as the mood struck her and then she'd shove them in a drawer "for the future." After her death, her husband, Gordon Snell, gathered together all the stories... and voila, another Maeve Binchy book was published.

Maeve Binchy short stories are lovely. They aren't terribly satisfying, though, as one of her strengths as a writer was to develop characters and relationships. How much can you do in 10 pages or less? But a taste of Binchy is better than no Binchy at all.

This was the book that I'd pick up between books, when I could get it out of the library. Knowing it was my last "new" Binchy, I wasn't in a rush to finish it which is why it took me about 14 months to get through this not quite 400-page book.

Now to go back and read old Binchy books...

Hood

I think had I checked on goodreads to see what Hood was about before downloading it onto my iPad, I most probably would not have taken this book from the library. But... I'd finished nine, ten and Barkskins still hadn't become available for me to continue with my reading of that massive book. It was late in the evening, I needed something to read before turning off the light. I can't say I'd loved Room, my one and only Emma Donoghue book, but it was very engaging and I enjoyed her writing style so without doing any further investigation, I downloaded Hood and started to read.

In this much earlier novel by Emma Donoghue, there are two big story lines: grief and lesbianism. I'm sure the lesbian aspect of the story might be quite different - or at least I'd hope it would be quite different if the book was written today. The story takes place in 1992 Dublin where the main character, Pen, loses her lover, Cara, to a car crash. Pen has never come out to anyone but a few of Cara's friends. This part of the story is about  what it would mean to come out to Cara's father (whom Pen and Cara had been living together with for a few years), to Cara's sister, to some folks at work (she works as a primary teacher in a girls' Catholic school) or to her own mother. This part of the book wasn't that relatable to me, and like I said, I hope that if this story was being told today that much of this would be very different.

The grief plot line, on the other hand, was very relatable. The story takes place over the 5 day period after Cara's death. While going through the early stages of grieving, Pen spends lots of time remembering the past. Totally understandable and completely relatable. What is it like to grieve for a "friend" who is much more than a friend? There were several passages related to grief that really stood out.

'I heard,' she mentioned, 'there was a death in your house.'
My face slipped. 'There was,' I said.
'Is it your first, by any chance?'
I blinked at her.
'Your first brush with the whole business?'
Strictly speaking, my father was my first, but I said, 'It is, Sister.'
'Ah,' she said, her breath trailing away. After a second she said, 'You'll get better at it.'
'What, does each one get easier?'
'No, no,' she said, tucking her hands under her habit, 'but you'll have more know-how next time.'

Know-how? Does know how even help? I've had so many losses in my life over the past several years. In just the past few weeks, I've lost a very dear long-time pen pal, a caring friend from one of my book clubs and a much-loved family friend. And no, it doesn't get easier. And I don't think I've gotten any better. Grief stinks. Losing loved ones stinks. Losing friends way too early stinks.

Another passage had me thinking.

It came into my head that everyone on this street had either gone through a loss more or less equivalent to mine, or would do so by the end of their life. Some would have it easier, some worse, some over and over.

My guess is that you don't feel a great loss when you don't feel a great connection first. Pen was blessed to feel so connected to Cara. It was a true love. So in that respect, she was lucky. (I should add here that the part of the story that I liked least was Pen and Cara's relationship. Pen was completely monogamous, completely committed to Cara. Cara was... well... she just seemed to me way too high maintenance, way too complicated, way too dramatic, way too loose. And not necessarily in the sexual sense, although there was that, too. The times I wanted to throw my iPad across the room were times where Pen was putting up with Cara's really bad behavior. What kept me reading was reading about Pen's grief.)

After the completion of the novel, before the reader's guide, there was A Conversation with Emma Donoghue.

When you wrote Hood, what were you hoping readers would see in it? And how did you envision readers reacting to Pen and Cara?

I was aiming high: I wanted to write a lesbian romance that readers of all stripes would care about. I hoped that the universality of grief would compensate for the specificity of the lesbian identity, and that Pen and Cara's flawed but persistent relationship would be interesting even to readers who had never lived anything like it.

As far as I'm concerned, Donoghue hit the mark with the grief. And that was enough for me.

I gave this book 4 stars on goodreads. Normally that would mean that I'd recommend this book to most. Because some readers might be put off by a lesbian romance and because others prefer not to escape into a book about grief, this for sure isn't a book for everyone. In the end, I'm glad I stuck with it.