The Sunrise

by Victoria Hislop (Harper 2015; first published in 2014 by Headline, a Hachette UK company)

I was looking for the Island by the same author, but couldn’t find it in my library, so I picked up this one instead. It’s the story of several Greek Cypriot families and a Turkish Cypriot family caught up in the events of 1974, when proponents of unification with Greece overthrew Archbishop Makarios and Turkey responded by invading Cyprus. The coastal resort city of Famagusta (Αμμόχωστος, [aˈmːoxostos]) was emptied out of its people, surrounded by barbed wire, and rendered a ghost city.

The main characters include Afroditi and Savvas Papacosta, who own two beachfront hotels in Famagusta: The Paradise Beach and The Sunrise, their fancy new hotel; Emine Özkan and her family: husband Halit, sons Ali, Hüseyin and Mehmet; and the Georgiou family: Irini and Vasilis, sons Markos and Christos, and Maria, her husband Panikos and their little son Vasilakis. Markos is Savvas Papcosta’s right-hand man, who is entrusted with the hotel when Savvas and Afroditi flee the city; Markos and Afroditi are engaged in a passionate affair. Emine works in The Sunrise as a hairdresser. Her friend Irini lives with her family on the same street. The friendship between the two, one Greek and the other Turkish, is perhaps unusual; their husbands refuse to meet each other.

When everyone else flees the city, the Georgious and the Özkans do not leave because in each case, one of the sons is missing (Christos, who was involved with EOKA B, the organization fighting for unification with Greece, and Ali, who of course opposed this). Initially, neither family realizes that the other has remained behind, but they find each other and eventually move in together, first in the Georgious’ home after the Özkans’ is broken into and ransacked, and later, when that is no longer possible, in The Sunrise. It is very dangerous to go out in the city; the only people who do so are Markos and Hüseyin, who go out at night to find food. But Markos has other, secret reasons to be out in the city at night, which in the end lead to tragedy.

Readers will learn a lot about the events in Cyprus which transformed the island to this day. The horrors of the invasion, the uncertainties faced by the inhabitants, the atrocities suffered by both sides, the plight of the refugees, are all depicted as the novel progresses. And because we come to know the characters, we care about what happens to them.

The Hearts of Horses

by Molly Gloss (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)

Readers also get to know something about the lifestyles, motivations, challenges and desires of the various people living in this part of the country during the Great War. And finally, readers learn quite a lot about horses, most of which I already knew, but others probably don’t.A former horsy kid, I tore through this novel in about two days. It’s the story of 19-year-old Martha Lessen, gentler of horses in 1917 Oregon. Martha has left an abusive home in Pendleton and come to Elwha County, looking for work “breaking” horses. Actually, Martha loves horses and gentles and trains them without breaking their spirits. She has the good fortune to ask for work first at the home of George and Louise Bliss, who not only take her on and give her a place to eat and sleep, but who help her find enough jobs to keep her busy “riding the circle” of their neighbors’ properties, working with the untrained horses at each farm or ranch and then riding one of them on to the next place. As winter turns to spring, Martha gets to know the neighbors; acquires a beau; gets an abusive hired hand turned out of his job and home; saves a family from ptomaine poisoning but is almost killed when the clueless husband and father, on his way home from a drinking bout, frightens her horse off the road. Martha is an appealing character, naive and tender-hearted, terribly shy and awkward with people, but confident and skilled with horses. Another favorite character is Henry Frazer, who is as gentle and patient in his pursuit of Martha as she is when working with a frightened horse. The Blisses, the Woodruff sisters, the Thiedes, the Romers, the Kandels, and other characters all have their own stories, which the reader will follow with interest.

It’s not a love story, although love has a role. There is not a single over-arching plot, unless it’s Martha’s search for community. Some chapters deal with important events, like the death of Tom Kandel from cancer; others just follow Martha’s daily routines or activities like attending a dance or going to a skating party. But Gloss held my interest throughout the book.

The Little French Bistro

by Nina George (translated by Simon Pare; Crown 2017; originally in German Die Mondspielerin published in 2010 by Knaur Verlag)

Marianne has spent her adult life married to a jerk who makes her feel ugly and stupid. One evening on a vacation in Paris, she decides to end her life, but she is rescued and ends up on a train to Brittany, where she finds work, meets interesting people, falls in love, and learns to love and value life again.

I was looking for the previous novel by the same author, The Little Paris Bookshop, but I came up with this instead. It was enjoyable.

Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum

by Jennifer Cook O’Toole (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018)

I’ve always been interested in autism. I’ve read most of Temple Grandin’s books. I was reading Thinking in Pictures back in the 90s when I first noticed the similarities between Grandin and my then very young daughter, who doctors assured me was “not autistic”. . . until one day the diagnosis ASD appeared in her medical record (It is still there.). But I had somehow missed the work of Jennifer Cook O’Toole, who wrote a book I wish I had given my daughter in those painful adolescent years: The Asperkid’s (Secret) Book of Social Rules: The Handbook of Not-So-Obvious Social Guidelines for Tweens and Teens with Asperger Syndrome (2013). (Two years later, she wrote Sisterhood of the Spectrum: An Asperger Chick’s Guide to Life.) Autism in Heels is O’Toole’s memoir of growing up with undiagnosed autism. Extremely smart, multi-talented, and high-functioning, she was crippled by her inability to understand and follow the complex social rules that govern all of our interactions with others. This led to ostracism, bullying, self-doubt, perfectionism, abusive relationships, anorexia, and more, all of which is shared in painful detail in the book. Jennifer O’Toole never realized that she was on the spectrum until her three children, including her youngest, a girl, received the diagnosis. As she learned more about autism, she began to question her own life story, especially after her daughter’s diagnosis. Since then, she has become a voice for the many girls and women worldwide who are neurologically different, whose sensitivities rule their daily lives, who struggle to make and maintain friendships. Autism looks different in girls than in boys, but it can still make lives difficult and can sometimes result in astonishingly self-destructive behaviors and choices.

Maybe it isn’t too late to give my daughter those books.