A Letter from Danielle for October ’21
Hi everyone!!
October is one of my favorite months. The weather is brisk andcool in most places, but not cold yet, and there is a special kind of energy in the air that I always find invigorating. Fall is in full swing, the leaves are falling, winter is coming—but not there yet. I love the brisk energy in October and the picked-up pace after the summer. Kids are settled into school, their schedules are usually set and rolling smoothly, which gives busy moms andparents a little more time to themselves (and more time to read).
I have a really fun book coming out today, The Butler. It’s an unusual story, about a man from Argentina, originally from awealthy family but grew up in poverty with a devoted mother and his identical twin after they were abandoned by their father. When he was seventeen he moved to France when his mother remarried—a Frenchman—and his twin remained in Argentinato follow a dark path with his unsavory friends, a path which eventually led him to the heart of the drug cartels in Colombia.
Meanwhile, the central character of the book trained as a butler in England and worked in some of the grandest houses there for twenty years. He is brilliant and impeccable at his job, with all the traditions an English butler must follow. When his employer dies, he visits his mother in Paris for a while, and takes atemporary job with a young American woman who is spending ayear in Paris after her magazine folds. Their lives intersect, both of them at a crossroads moment, and they enjoy the projects he helps her with, which are different from his traditional butler duties: varied and fun for him, and a huge help for her.
While there, he learns more about his own history from his mother. A German war criminal grandfather, his mother’s own struggles in her youth, his father who rejected them. And his identical twin reappears, deeply embedded among the drug lords of Colombia. It’s an unusual exciting book, full of unexpected twists and turns and revelations, which is areminder of how little we know sometimes about other people, and even ourselves and our own histories. And once the secrets are exposed, how our lives can change. I hope you have fun with the book.
And . . . All That Glitters comes out in paperback this month, which is also a fun book—and about the shiny things, people andlives which dazzle us and appeal to us, when sometimes the simpler things in our lives (and more solid people) have far greater value.
As the weather turns cooler, I hope you have time to tuck in at home and do some fun reading!!!
Happy October!!!
Love,
Danielle