Dry. A memoir. by Augusten Burroughs



What a poweful memoir!  As Augusten must come to terms with his alcholism, and concurrently his abusive childhood, his ex-lover's deeath from AIDS, the job he dislikes, and rehab and AA meetings, he uses humour and sharp description to allow the reader an inside view of his struggle. I recommend this.

The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier

Ella Turner (Tournier) and her husband, Rick, travel to France for a work assignment of Rick's. Peculiar dreams connect Ella to ancestors from the 1500's. This sets her on a journey of self-discovery which takes the reader to the story of the Tourniers at the time of the Catholic persecution of the Calvinists and Huguenots. Ella meets 'family' in Switzerland, giving her a respite from her problems with her husband.  She is falling in love with a local librarian, at the same time as she has become pregnant.  A variety of characters in the present and the past generate the colour of their lives. Ella must make serious decisions and put to rest the Virgin blue that invades her mind.

This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

While DI Thomas Lynley is still on compassionate leave after the murder of his wife, Isabelle Ardery is brought into the Met as his temporary replacement. The discovery of a body in a Stoke Newington cemetery offers Isabelle the chance to make her mark with a high profile murder investigation. Persuading Lynley back to work seems the best way to guarantee a result: Lynley's team is fiercely loyal to him and Isabelle needs them - and especially Barbara Havers - on side. The Met is twitchy: a series of PR disasters has undermined its confidence. Isabelle knows that she'll be operating under the unforgiving scrutiny of the media, so is quick -- perhaps too quick - to pin the murder on a convenient suspect. The murder trail leads Lynley and Havers to the New Forest, and the eventual resolution of the case. Its roots are in a long-ago act of violence that has poisoned subsequent generations and its outcome is both tragic and shocking. Review by GoodReads.

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

This novel does not disappoint.  I've always enjoyed the history of the 'Biblical' times.  Whether I'm reading The Red Tent or Testament, I remained glued to the pages.  The Dovekeepers is a complicated story of four women who each tell their story of how they came to be at the Jerusalem fortress, trying to withstand the Roman assault.  There are potions, spells, prayers, incantations, hard work, hunger,  and doomed love affairs.  Alice Hoffman does an excellent job of revealing the day-to-day life of the times.  Weaving, cooking, childbirth, and love all reveal a world of honour, harness, homelessness, This is not a story of action.  The lives of the women are chronicled with patience, as are the lives of women.  The women in the novel learn to share, support, and love one another as the shared adversity of women is recognized in a way that binds them and their children together.

Don't Cry Now by Joy Fielding

The prolific Joy Fieding has added another mystery to her credit.  A young mother and local school teacher has been accused of the murder of her husband's ex-wife.  At the same time, she is trying to care for his two teenage children, as well as her own daughter. Twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the end.  A real who-dunit!

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Somehow the heroine, Marina Singh (with an "h") lacked emotional depth for me. In spite of all the childhood memories and dedication to her pharmaceutical company, 'Vogel', the author did not make her seem real.  Marina did whatever she was told.  When her boss and lover, Mr. Fox, dispatched her to the Amazon she went willingly, telling herself she was doing it for the Alders.  She needed to have closure on Annick Alder's death.Yet, it was Fox who should have gone.

       There are too many unanswered questions in this novel.  Why did Dr. Swenson not reveal her knowledge of Marina as a former student and the botched C-section?  How was it that Alders was still alive?  Why did Swenson write that he was dead?  Swenson seemed to be a law unto herself. Who was the father of Dr. Swenson's unborn child? Why did Marina allow herself to be drawn into the tribe's lifestyle - wearing their clothes, having her hair braided, and participating in the women's fertility rituals? Though the novel was interesting in its description of the jungle and events medical, my opinion is less enthusiastic than many of the reviews I have read to try and understand the story.  And what was with the deaf child and the young couple who occupied Dr. Swenson's house in the city? 

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

     
  By the author of Little Children, this novel is a story which shows the divide between the Christian evangelical movement and the liberal middle class.  A teacher, Ruth, was assigned a sex ed course in her local high school which would not present birth control other than abstinence.  Her views and opinions for a more open and realistic curriculum put her in conflict with her school and community. She became romantically involved with her daughter's soccer coach who belonged to a fundamental Christian 'tabranacle', causing another divide for Ruth.  

Insatiable by Meg Cabot

What a fun sequel! Meena just can't seem to get her love life and her work life in line. It's not every day that someone employed by the Vatican to roust vampires falls in love with the prince of darkness. Her ability to predict death, an unemployed brother, and well-meaning colleagues all figure into this plot which has twists and turns unexpected. Will Meena ever find true love?  Will Lucien become human? Will Alaric get his girl?  Will a diabolical Vatican plot be exposed? Meg Cabot takes you on a romp through the underworld - no, I mean the waters which flow beneath New York City.  The author of the Princess Diaries again stakes her claim as an author of novels for young women (and old ones like me).

The Paid Companion by Amanda Quick

Lots of fun.  Another romp by a Victorian heroine who is independent, determined, and adventurous. Quite the exception to the standards of the time.  Very authentic settings, costuming, and values. As good as The River Knows. Love the pseudonym, Jayne.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink disappointed me.  Having read The Outliers and also The Tipping Point, I  found this text to be tedious and overdone.  The first chapter said it all.  People make first impressions and they are most often right. How the brain does it depends on many things.  But, I do likle the author's hair. The End.

The Pull of the Moon by Diane Janes

    Ghosts, cement, and murder - This novel surprised me by its cleverly constructed plot and development of the characters. It is the most intelligent mystery that I've read recently.  Katy was 19 years old when she decided to spend the summer with her boyfriend, Danny, and his friend, Simon.  A runaway teenage girl, Trudie, changes the dynamic of the group.  The author takes us to the present as Katy prepares to meet Danny's mother who is dying in a nursing home.  Before she dies she wants answers to the questions she has surrounding that summer of '72.  Only Katy knows the truth. She has held many secrets over her lifetime.  Good read!

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

This book is excellent! 

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town—and the family—Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. --Simon and Schuster, Canada

The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw (2010)

"I’m a Southerner born and bred, and I grew up going to the beach for a couple of weeks every year in South Carolina, where the water is as warm as your bath, the pace is slow, and the fake-bamboo furniture is comfortable. Then, after a move to Boston that still baffles even me, I met my husband, who summered. (In all fairness, his family would be loath to use that word; nevertheless, when you decamp to the coast for the entire summer, every summer, that’s summering.) Moreover, they summered on Cape Cod, in a very old house built to withstand howling winter winds (small windows, fireplaces, and low ceilings), and where the decor was not, um, tropical. The water was often freezing. The air was often freezing. In August.

As I’ve begun talking to people about my debut novel, The Swimming Pool, I’ve noticed that one of the most popular questions people ask is “Where did you get the idea for your book?” and that, often, what they are really asking is, “Is it autobiographical?” It’s hard to believe that writers make up stories out of thin air, and for good reason: they don’t. Somewhere, in every book, there are elements hidden of the writer, of the writer’s family, the writer’s history and experience. The best description I have heard is “refracted autobiography”--emphasis on refracted. For instance, The Swimming Pool is the story of a young man, Jed McClatchey, who is mired in grief for his parents, who died seven years previously--his mother in a still-unsolved break-in/murder. Jed falls in love and begins an affair with an older woman, Marcella Atkinson, who he then learns was his late father’s mistress; as one might imagine, complications and revelations ensue.


Now. I am happily married. My parents are both alive. I don’t know anyone who was murdered. I am not Italian (Marcella is). I don’t know any cougars personally. It is all made up.


Except for the fact that this book is set on Cape Cod, and Marcella, an expatriate from a warm and sunny clime, is mystified by it. And except that Jed, who just happens to be a Southerner, has grown up summering there. Which is not usual for a boy from Atlanta. One might say that I have split myself between my two protagonists: I have the woman who feels like a constant outsider; I have the man who loves being somewhere different, who knows how different it is from his birthplace and yet who gets it. Because I think I finally get the Cape, after twenty-something years. Or maybe I just get it enough to fake it. I can still stand a bit outside. I can see it clearly, in a way that it is sometimes hard for me to see the places where I grew up.


It is the quintessential stance of the writer: you’ve got to blend in. You’ve got to pass. You’ve got to get people to forget that you’re watching, hard. And, really, they shouldn’t be nervous; the things writers notice, or that I notice, anyway, are not the things one might expect. In this case, there was a story I heard long ago about a family I barely knew, where the middle--aged husband left his high-school-sweetheart wife--a sad, but garden-variety, occurrence. For some reason, it stuck in my head. And then it combined with the feel of the sun beating down on a clay tennis court in the woods (a court I decidedly watched from the outside; I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a tennis ball), with the cast-in-amber interior of a beloved old Yankee house, and with the sort of crime one might read about in the newspaper and then promptly forget. My own experience with postpartum depression was given to a secondary character, and intensified. My one trip ever to the Connecticut coast yielded a place for Marcella’s escape. And on and on.


Where did I get the idea for the book? I have no idea. Is it autobiographical? Of course not. Of course.


As it happens, I still get to go to South Carolina occasionally, often in August, when I can sweat to my heart’s content. As it also happens, I wrote much of the book on the Cape. I belong to both places, and to neither. As a writer, it’s better that way." --Holly LeCraw--

Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

 Alice Thrift, M.D. has a great I.Q. and good itentions, however, her social life is non-existent and her ability to read social skills is highly impaired.  When 'Don Juan' enters her life, intent on winning her affections, one wonders if he is sincere or simply a gigilo.  This novel is filled with humour and restrained sympathy for Alice. I lookmforwrd to reading other books by this author.