What's in a Name Reading Challenge

Since I didn't do so well on my Armchair Traveler change at A Life in Books, I thought I would try once more to complete a challenge. This time it's What's in a Name, hosted by Annie. Here are my six choices:

*book with a first name in the title: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

*book with a weather event in the title: Ice Road by Gillian Slovo

*book with an animal in the tile: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

*book with a plant in the title: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

*book with a place name in the title: Prague my Arthur Philips

*book with a color in the title: Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

2007 Orange Broadband Prize Long List

The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (previously known as the Orange Prize) has long been the literary award I watch most closely. I find it distinctive in that it's the only literary award I know that is limited to women. At the same time, I celebrate the amazing diversity of the nominees--this year, for example, the long list includes novels by twenty authors from seven different countries. Eight of the women are first-time novelists; of the remaining twelve, eight have been on the Orange long list previously. As always, I look at this list and see authors and novels I've never heard of before, yet would love to read. But I've committed myself to read the books I already own, rather than buying new ones. I have several Orange nominees from years past on my shelf, including the 2004 winner, Small Island by Andrea Levy. The urge to buy each and every one of these novels is quelled (somewhat) by the fact that I own, and am currenly reading, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.

Anyway, have a look at the long list:

• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
• Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan (Bloomsbury)
• Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk (Faber)
• The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)
• Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson (Solidus)
• Over by Margaret Forster (Chatto & Windus)
• The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger (Picador)
• When to Walk by Rebecca Gowers (Canongate)
• A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Chatto & Windus)
• The Observations by Jane Harris (Faber)
• Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland (Canongate)
• The Girls by Lori Lansens (Virago)
• Alligator by Lisa Moore (Virago)
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Tindal Street Press)
• The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (Quercus)
• Careless by Deborah Robertson (Sceptre)
• Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert (Heinemann)
• Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley (Faber)
• Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus)
• The Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace (Harvill Secker)
  

TAMAR by Mal Peet

How nice it is that my first book review on this blog is a glowing one. I found Tamar in the Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" pamphlet and, upon noticing that it was about my favorite historical period (WWII), I snapped it up. I was intrigued because the story centered around a facet of the war I hadn't known much about--the Dutch Resistance. Once I opened the book, I read obsessively.

Tamar interweaves the story of two undercover operatives in occupied Holland in 1944 with the story of Tamar, the 15-year-old granddaughter (and namesake) of one of the Dutch officers half a century later as she seeks to unravel a mystery left by her grandfather before he committed suicide.

The backbone of the plot is the intense plight of the aforementioned spies, code-named Dart and Tamar (named for two rivers in England) over the course of several months' worth of spying in a small Nazi-occupied town. Tamar's base is the Maartens farm, where he carries on a romance with the farmer's granddaughter, Marijke. Dart, covering as a physician, is based at a nearby insane asylum populated by the few patients the Nazis hadn't relocated to concentration camps. Dart also falls in love with Marijke. Guided by the British from London, Dart and Tamar manage to stay one step ahead of the Germans as relay messages to and from London.

The other half of the story revolves around Tamar. fifty years later in London, England. Left with a box of WWII memorabilia after her grandfather's suicide, she resolves resolve the mystery of her grandfather's past. She enlists the help of a cousin, and the two set off on what seems to be a wild goose chase from London to Cornwall. Admittedly, I guessed the plot twist quite early in the novel, but that didn't detract from the story. The author skillfully kept the plot tight, with marvelous use of language and metaphor as he incrementally mounted the plot's tension. The denouement was the most stunning in my recent memory.

Tamar is billed as a Young Adult (YA) novel. In fact, it won Britain's Carnegie Medal for Young Adult Literature. All I can say is, YA has changed since my youth. The full title of the novel is Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal. All of the above are accounted for. Plenty of espionage, passion, and major betrayal. This IS NOT The Babysitters' Club, folks. One could quite easily forget that the book is meant for young adults more easily than if reading Harry Potter, for example. There are vivid accounts of starvation (a Nazi war tactic) and murder, and deportations of Jews. Overall, a triumphant novel.