What Rose Forget by Nevada Barr

 

WHAT ROSE FORGOT by Nevada Barr is a stand-alone, suspenseful new mystery from an author who has been winning awards (Firestorm, Deep South) for more than two decades. The story opens with Rose Dennis, an older woman, cowering in the outdoors.  It soon becomes apparent that she has run away from a nursing home called Longwood, chosen in part because of its proximity to her teenage granddaughter’s house.  Soon discovered and returned to the Memory Care Unit at the facility, Rose plots a subsequent escape while questioning her own sanity.  She is an appealing character – very resourceful, wonderfully artistic and into yoga and meditation (Breathe … Right View … Right Intention …) which helps to center her.  Some of the actions are a bit “crazy,” but granddaughter Mel, her friend Royal, and Rose’s “techie” sister (“I am not a hacker”) named Marion build on each other’s strengths. The mystery – involving drugs, deaths and greed – and a sense of menace build rapidly.  WHAT ROSE FORGOT received a starred review from Library Journal. Once started, you will be finishing this quickly, cheering for Rose all the way.

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE by Jean Kwok (Girl in Translation) is her latest, much anticipated novel about two sisters born after their parents immigrated to New York City from China.  Sylvie is the elder sister by several years and she was actually raised by cousins and a grandmother in the Netherlands until age nine when she joined the family in New York, helping care for Amy, a then-two-year-old toddler. 

Now an adult, Sylvie returns to the Netherlands to be with her terminally ill Grandmother, but disappears after her Grandmother’s death. That prompts Amy to fly to Europe, but the police are relatively unconcerned, the cousins are kind of mean and uncaring and Amy struggles with language differences as she tries to find Sylvie.  

There’s some menacing suspense in the air and obvious questions about whom Amy should trust, but the story moves slowly.  Flashbacks told by Sylvie alternate with Amy’s recounting of her search and with their mother’s thoughts. SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE uses family relationships, secrets, and assumptions (including some racial and immigrant stereotypes) to show how little we really know each other. Kwok’s novel received a starred review from Booklist. 

A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib

A PURE HEART by Rajia Hassib received well-deserved starred reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus. This is the contemporary story of two Egyptian sisters.  One, Fayrouz, chooses to be called Rose and is an archeologist who marries an American journalist, studies at Columbia University and eventually works at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The other sister, Gameela, is more obviously religious (for example, she wears a hijab), harbors a number of secrets, and is killed in a suicide bombing. Hassib uses flashbacks to develop the characters and motivations of both sisters. She deftly weaves in questions of fate and identity: [Rose] “thinks that maybe there are multiple versions of her, too, just as there are multiple versions of him and multiple versions of Gameela, and that her different Roses will have to learn to co-exist, that Gameela’s sister and Mark’s wife cannot go on believing they are enemies …” and of faith: “so much of faith as she [Gameela] understood it lay in a constant struggle to improve oneself, in the true meaning of jihad as an ongoing striving to be better, to do better, to let go of egotistic, selfish notions….”   A PURE HEART is very informative about Egyptian culture and history; plus, this novel explores so much more, including family relationships, sibling jealousy, dissent, poverty, privilege, religion, the role of women, guilt, after-life and death. This would be an excellent title for our Global Voices students as well as adventurous book groups.