Tag: 20BooksofSummer

Blog Tour/Book Review: The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise

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FINAL Emperor of Shoes B T Poster (1)

I’m delighted to be co-hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise alongside my tour buddy, Emma’s Bookish Corner.  My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and for introducing me to a book I might otherwise not have read.  You can read my review below.

The Emperor of ShoesAbout the Book

Alex Cohen, a twenty-six-year-old Jewish Bostonian, is living in southern China, where his father runs their family-owned shoe factory. Alex reluctantly assumes the helm of the company, but as he explores the plant’s vast floors and assembly lines, he comes to a grim realization: employees are exploited, regulatory systems are corrupt and Alex’s own father is engaging in bribes to protect the bottom line.

When Alex meets a seamstress named Ivy, his sympathies begin to shift. She is an embedded organizer of a pro-democratic Chinese party, secretly sowing dissonance among her fellow labourers. Will Alex remain loyal to his father and his heritage? Or will the sparks of revolution ignite?

Praise for The Emperor of Shoes

‘Spencer Wise’s The Emperor of Shoes is one of the most complex, nuanced, character-rich first novels I have ever read. It is utterly original in portraying a twenty-first century Jewish diaspora, with one foot in homeland America and one foot in Asia creating consumer products, and, for Wise s protagonist, with an accompanying empathy for China s grassroots aspirations. Wise comes to us fully-flighted as a master stylist and a compelling storyteller’ – Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner

‘Fresh and innovative, Spencer Wise’s The Emperor of Shoes is the latest addition to the tradition of young-man fiction that starts with Bellow and Roth… I’ve taught for more than forty years; this is the best first novel I’ve ever read’ – David Kirby, National Book Award Nominee

‘What a haunting and intelligent debut novel. The confident and assured prose evokes easily the beauty of the complex relationships, the ugliness of the situation in the shoe factory, and the difficulty Alex faces when deciding between following his heart and his head. Just stunning’ – Louise Beech, author of How to Be Brave, The Mountain in My Shoe and Maria in the Moon

Format: Hardcover, ebook (320 pp.)    Publisher: No Exit Press
Published: 26th July 2018                        Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Pre-order/Purchase Links*
Publisher | Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Emperor of Shoes on Goodreads

My Review

In his praise for The Emperor of Shoes, Robert Olen Butler describes the book as ‘character-rich’ and I can’t disagree.  That doesn’t mean, however, that the characters are necessarily easy to like.

I found myself constantly shifting my view of Alex’s father, Fedor, accorded the accolade the ‘Emperor of Shoes’ (as he proudly reminds people).  One minute I felt he was merely an ambitious father trying his best to preserve the family business for his son in the face of changing market forces; the next minute, I was feeling reluctant sympathy for a pathetic, hypochondriac desperate for his son’s attention; the next minute, I was repelled by a monstrous figure up to his eyes in corruption with little or no regard for the lives of his workers.

Similarly, I started out condemning Alex for his naivety about working conditions in the factory.  How could he not have known what was going on?  Was he stupid, deliberately turning a blind eye because he couldn’t face up to the truth, or fearful of challenging his father?  However, the author skilfully takes the reader inside the mind of Alex, sharing his struggles with the difficult moral choices he faces and slowly gaining this reader’s sympathy.

Inspired by Ivy, the Chinese woman and activist with whom he forms a relationship, Alex begins to imagine making a difference to the lives of the workers in his factory.  But he faces opposition from the local state institutions built on bribes (euphemistically referred to as ‘gifts’) and corruption, personified by the malign and creepy Gang, described as ‘a Brooklyn mob boss in Mao jacket and togs’ who can make people ‘disappear with a nod of the head.’   A business proposition from Alex’s old friend, Bernie, offers the possibility of a third way but will mean taking a strikingly different path from the way his father has run the business up until now.    Does Alex have what it takes to face down ‘The Emperor of Shoes’ and start a quiet revolution?  And, if he does, will it take a greater sacrifice than he can bear?

The Emperor of Shoes made me think – and I always like that in a book.  For example, it made me question if, with a clear conscience, I could ever buy shoes made in China again without assuring myself of the working conditions in the factory.   ‘The elevator opened onto a room the size of an airplane hanger, and the dank warm air from the heat setter boxes slipped over my face like a pillow.  A boy with a Mohawk scowled at me: a stump for a right arm, severed at the elbow by the steel embossing plate on the leather grain press.  A girl, eyes jaundiced, punch-drunk, the first flush of benzene poisoning from cement glue vapors, scratched at her arm.  Everywhere, people and machines.’    A far cry from the conditions in Alex’s upmarket hotel.

The book also explores in an interesting way questions of identity.   An American by birth, Alex is nevertheless keenly aware of his Jewish and Russian heritage.  At one point, he is asked by Zhang, leader of the activist movement: “Russian, Jewish, American.  How can you be all?  Or do you pick one?”

There is real energy in the writing, along with acute observation and dark humour – for example, when Alex returns to his luxurious, air-conditioned hotel suite after a day at the factory (while the workers return to their dormitories subject to a curfew).  ‘There was a silver tray on my desk with a bottle of wine, a long stem rose in a champagne flute, a box of Godiva chocolates.  Even the gifts were a kind of mockery: here, enjoy a long sensual evening by yourself. These came courtesy of the hotel, once a week, for Ambassador level guests.  You reached Ambassador when you’d spent a good three quarters of your life on the road sleeping in their hotels.  It got passed down too, an inheritance you didn’t earn.  Death by luxury.’    

The Emperor of Shoes is an impressive debut – compelling, thought-provoking and spirited.  I, for one, can’t wait to read what the author creates next.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, No Exit Press, and Random Things Tours in return for an honest and unbiased review.  The Emperor of Shoes is the eighth of my 20 Books of Summer.

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Spencer WiseAbout the Author

Spencer Wise was born in Boston in 1977.  He holds a BA from Tufts University, an MA in fiction from The University of Texas, where he was a James Michener Fellow, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University.  Wise is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he is at work on his second novel, Holderness.

Connect with Spencer

Website ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Goodreads

Blog Tour/Book Review: Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks

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Along with my tour buddy, Novels and NonFiction, I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks.  Many thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the tour and for Hannah Bright at Doubleday for my review copy.  You can read my review of this haunting and atmospheric book below.

Do check out the tour banner at the bottom of this post to see the other great book bloggers taking part in the tour.

Call of the CurlewAbout the Book

Virginia Wrathmell has always known she will meet her death on the marsh.

It’s New Year’s Eve 2015 and eighty-six year old Virginia Wrathmell feels like the end is upon her. As she looks out on the dark and desolate marshes that surround the house she’s lived in since she was young, Virginia is overcome with the memories of one winter that have stayed with her since childhood.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1939 and Virginia is eleven, an orphan arriving to meet her new parents at their mysterious house, Salt Winds, on the edge of a vast marsh. War feels far away out here amongst the birds and shifting sands – until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh. The people at Salt Winds are the only ones to see it.

When her adopted father goes missing, and a mysterious stranger arrives in his place, Salt Winds becomes a very dangerous place to be. Virginia’s failure to protect the house’s secrets will leave her spending a lifetime dealing with the aftermath.

“The wind has dropped, but every now and then a gust will shiver in from the sea, carrying some fragment – a feather, a straw, a grain of sand, the scent of snow, the dainty bone of a bird – by way of an offering to the house.”

From the author:

“The location, Tollbury Marsh, came to me first, the story second. The marsh is a place on the edge of normal life, which seems flat and accessible to the uninitiated, but is actually full of dangers. I wanted to capture the strong and pervasive sense of place that I felt when reading The Woman in Black and Great Expectations.”

Format: Hardcover, ebook (320 pp.)    Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 28th June 2018                      Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Call of the Curlew on Goodreads

My Review

Somehow it doesn’t seem quite right that I’ve been reading Call of the Curlew sitting in my garden in the bright sunshine.  The atmosphere of the book is such that it seems more suited to misty autumn nights, with the rain lashing down outside and the wind rattling the window panes.  Throw in some creaking floorboards, some footsteps in the attic and your reading experience would be complete.

Told in chapters that alternate between 2015 and the early years of the Second World War, Call of the Curlew has a haunting, mysterious quality.  Salt Winds, the old house at which orphan Virginia arrives in 1939 to join her adoptive parents, Lorna and Clem, occupies an isolated position on the marshes at the end of a long lane.

The author really gets inside the mind of ten-year old Virginia.  Initially, she’s concerned that she might be a disappointment to Lorna and Clem and be sent back to the orphanage (although she doesn’t think they do sale and return).  Virginia doesn’t understand everything she sees and hears in the house but she’s sensitive to the tension she detects between Lorna and Clem.  ‘Virginia liked it when they discussed everyday things: pots of tea and food prices and what needed doing in the garden.  It made them sound peaceful and close.  Anything bigger or more personal and they were on edge, like a couple of cats.’  Underlying everything, there’s an air of mystery, of secrets and things that can’t be spoken about.

Virginia also has a child’s literal interpretation of Clem’s warnings about the perils of setting foot on the marsh and the dangers that wait because of the shifting tides.  Virginia forms a touching relationship with Clem who seems better able to communicate with a child than Lorna.  Virginia’s relationship with Lorna is strained; Lorna always remains slightly distant and less openly affectionate.  Virginia has also acquired an acute sense of how to deal with certain situations: ‘Shutting up was almost always a clever move, she’d discovered, not just with Clem but with everyone.  People rarely object to a quiet child.’

From the very first time, Max Deering, a childhood friend of Clem, visits Salt Winds, ten-year old Virginia takes an instinctive dislike to him, sensing something unsettling about him she can’t put into words.  Her view of Max can’t help but affect the reader’s view of him, especially as the manner of his arrivals at the house conjured up thoughts for me of Mrs Danvers gliding in and out of shot in Hitchcock’s film version of Rebecca.  Virginia muses: ‘It was difficult to explain the car’s pull on her imagination – not without sounding silly – but there was something about its predatory grace that made it seem like a living thing.  The lane from Tollbury Point to Salt Winds was pitted with holes and bumps, but Mr Deering’s Austin 12 never seemed to mind. It just glided forwards, silent and slow, the way a shark glides over the ocean floor.’ 

I loved the author’s evocative, imaginative descriptions and eye for the smallest details when depicting a scene.   For example, as Virginia makes meticulous plans in response to what she believes is the sign she’s been waiting for, ‘She pictures the house, room by room, and plots the route of her farewell tour, mentally circling certain parts and crossing others out.’    Don’t you just love the idea of the ‘farewell tour’.  Or this description of the kitchen table: ‘The old tabletop rolled between them like a parchment map, grainy with longitude lines and knotty islands and uncharted territories.’  I can almost feel that under my fingers.

As the book progresses, it becomes apparent that some sort of tragedy occurred at Salt Winds which has haunted Virginia for the rest of her life and for which she feels, justifiably or not, responsible and for which she is convinced she will someday be called to make amends.  The enjoyment for the reader is finding out exactly the nature of the tragic event and the consequences that follow.

I thought the book was fabulous.  To my mind, in Call of the Curlew, Elizabeth Brooks gives Susan Hill (think The Woman in Black) and Sarah Waters (think The Little Stranger) a run for their money when it comes to creating a creepy, unsettling atmosphere.  I was also reminded at times of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and there is no higher praise in my book (pardon the pun).

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Doubleday, and Random Things Tours, in return for an honest and unbiased review.  Call of the Curlew is one of my 20 Books of Summer.

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In three words: Spooky, atmospheric, haunting

Try something similar…The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde by Eve Chase (read my review here)

Elizabeth BrooksAbout the Author

ELIZABETH BROOKS grew up in Chester, and read Classics at Cambridge. She lives on the Isle of Man with her husband and children.

Elizabeth describes herself as a “Brontë nerd”.  Call of the Curlew is her homage to the immersive and evocative writing of Charlotte Brontë.

Connect with Elizabeth

Website  ǀ Twitter  ǀ Goodreads

Call of the Curlew Blog Tour Poster