Every month we'll review a different book and we'll discuss them in our Book Club Forums.
You can view our previous reading list in our Book Club Forum, and purchase our current bookfrom the link below. Many books are available used from as little as $1.00!
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Join us in our Book Club forums for discussions with members and authors!
Please note that as of September 2011, all Book Club selections will be listed in the Member Book Club Forum rather than listed below. The list was simply becoming too long.
4.8
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June '09, The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
Literary/Historical Fiction
432 pages
Summary:
Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures.
Buy it here! Used for as little as *$0.82
*Prices vary by availability
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April '09: Lucia, Lucia, by Adriana Trigiani
This month's author was referred by member Tabitha's mom!
Lucia, Lucia, by Adriana Trigiani
Fiction
304 Pages
Summary:
In 1950 Greenwich Village, 25-year-old Lucia has it all: a warm and loving Italian family, a papa with a successful grocery business, an engagement ring from her childhood sweetheart, and best of all, a career she loves as a seamstress and apprentice to a talented dress designer at B. Altman's department store. When Lucia meets a rich, handsome businessman whose ambitions for a luxurious uptown lifestyle match her own, her goals for her future soar even higher. Over the next two years, however, her dreams gradually unravel. Sorvino is well-cast as the narrator of Trigiani's (Milk Glass Moon) first-person tale. She ably conveys the confidence, eagerness, and romantic yearnings of youth, as well as the guilt Lucia suffers when she disappoints her loved ones. Sorvino is also adept at providing voices for a large cast of characters: the rich Italian accent of Lucia's father, the scolding tone of her mother, the shy voice of her sister-in-law and the smooth, movie-star tones of the rich stranger Lucia pins her hopes on. This is an engaging, well-told tale about life's unexpected twists and turns, the ways that even small choices have large repercussions and the hopeful notion that sometimes, when you least expect it, you can find happiness.
Buy it here, new or used!
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April 2011, Love Letters, by Geraldine Solon
Love Letters, by Geraldine Solon
Summary: Bridal shop manager Chloe Rogers will soon marry Richard Foster—so she thinks—until suddenly, she bumps into her childhood sweetheart, Josh Goldman, whom she hasn’t seen in thirteen years. The sparks between Chloe and Josh fly, but Richard provides safety, financial security. Should she follow her heart or her head? The answer comes in a surprise twist. While cleaning her attic, she stumbles upon love letters written to her estranged mother forty years ago from a man she loved. When Chloe secretly brings them together again and sees how much time they’ve lost, she is challenged not to make the same mistake her mother made. Will Chloe opt for security or will she risk her heart and marry her true love?
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April: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See
This month’s book was selected by Thinkhappy!
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See
Historical/Fiction
Summary:
Lily at 80 reflects on her life, beginning with her daughter days in 19th-century rural China. Foot-binding was practiced by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu, their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her, they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan. When war comes, Lily is separated from her husband and children. She survives the winter helped by Snow Flower's husband, a lowly butcher, until she is reunited with her family. As the years pass, the women's relationship changes; Lily grows more powerful in her community, bitter, and harder, until at last she breaks her bond with Snow Flower. They are not reunited until Lily tries to make the dying Snow Flower's last days comfortable. Their friendship, and this tale, illustrates the most profound of human emotions: love and hate, self-absorption and devotion, pride and humility, to name just a few. Even though the women's culture and upbringing may be vastly different from readers' own, the life lessons are much the same, and they will be remembered long after the details of this fascinating story are forgotten. -Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Please join us in the Book Club in our Women's Forum for club discussions. General comments about the book may be left below.
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August 2009, Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
August 2009 Book Club Selection
Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.
320 pages
Fiction
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August 2010, Husband and Wife, by Leah Stewart
Husband and Wife
by Leah Stewart
From Publishers Weekly
Some confessions are better left unuttered, as Sarah Price learns in Stewart's (The Myth of You and Me) solid latest. When novelist Nathan Bennett confesses to his wife, Sarah, right before a friend's wedding that he slept with another woman (his novel is titled Infidelity), Sarah's concerns shift from whether the dress she plans to wear to the wedding makes her look fat to what she will do about her future and that of their two young children, Mattie and Binx. What follows is an unflinching look at what happens when one's identity is shattered, and what-ifs and past choices come back to haunt the present. Chief among these what-ifs: Rajiv, an old friend nursing a long-unrequited crush on Sarah, and Sarah's longing to be seen once again as a poet. Stewart's graceful prose and easy storytelling pull the reader into caring about what happens to the struggling heroine while exploring the many gray areas of life and marriage. The conclusion, while true to Sarah, is surprising but not unrealistic.
In neuroscientist Genova's second novel (after Still Alice), a car crash gives a successful younger woman an obscure neurological syndrome called Left Neglect. Upwardly mobile Sarah and Bob Nickerson live in suburban Massachusetts with their three small children. Both work 60-hour weeks, though the economic downturn looms. When Sarah wakes up eight days after crashing her car on the way to work, the doctors inform her of her condition, which causes her brain to ignore the left side of everything, and she begins a long and uncertain recovery. Genova vividly describes Sarah's fear and frustration about a recovery that may never come, turning her struggle into a lesson in forgiveness, acceptance, and adaptability; insights reveal themselves with extreme clarity, and small moments between Bob and Sarah illustrate his stalwart love, though readers may want a more thorough investigation of his growing role as caretaker, and as a character. More accessible than her somber first book, which dealt with early-onset Alzheimer's, the central condition causes readers to wonder what brain disease she will think of next. (Jan.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
5
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August: Three Junes, by Julia Glass
Three Junes, by Julia Glass
Women's Fiction
Summary:
From Library Journal
This strong and memorable debut novel draws the reader deeply into the lives of several central characters during three separate Junes spanning ten years. At the story's onset, Scotsman Paul McLeod, the father of three grown sons, is newly widowed and on a group tour of the Greek islands as he reminisces about how he met and married his deceased wife and created their family. Next, in the book's longest section, we see the world through the eyes of Paul's eldest son, Fenno, a gay man transplanted to New York City and owner of a small bookstore, who learns lessons about love and loss that allow him to grow in unexpected ways. And finally there is Fern, an artist and book designer whom Paul met on his trip to Greece several years earlier. She is now a young widow, pregnant and also living in New York City, who must make sense of her own past and present to be able to move forward in her life. In this novel, expectations and revelations collide in startling ways. Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit or create for themselves is highly recommended for all fiction collections. Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ
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December 2009, When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge
When She Flew, by Jennie Shortridge
**Attention Readers**
Jennie Shortridge will be chatting with our members January 6, 2010, 12:30 p.m.
Fiction
352 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In this predictable but good-hearted novel, a father and his daughter—a damaged but loving Iraq War vet named Ray and a budding 12-year-old naturalist named Lindy—live happily off the grid in an Oregon forest until the day Lindy is spotted by a bird-watcher. Notified of a young girl wandering alone deep in the woods, the police assign dedicated officer Jessica Villareal to the case. Recently rejected by her own daughter and still smarting, Jessica sets out with the best of intentions for helping Lindy, but risks destroying the life Lindy and her father have built for themselves. Examining people willing to sidestep the rules in pursuit of a greater good, Shortridge's fourth novel (after
Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
) recalls Barbara Kingsolver's
Pigs in Heaven
; Shortridge even manages to finesse authentic performances from her population of familiar types: a pitiable war veteran, a conflicted cop and a poor but precocious youngster.
(Nov.)
Buy it Here - New or Used
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December 2010, The Next Thing on My List, by Jill Smolinski
Join us in reading The Next Thing on My List
by Jill Smolinski
December 2010 Women's Nest Book Club Selection:
From Publishers Weekly
Smolinski follows up her debut, Flip-Flopped, with an airy, hit and mostly miss novel about one rudderless woman's accidental journey of self-discovery. After a Weight Watchers meeting, narrator June Parker offers a ride home to newly svelte Marissa Jones, and the two hit it off until Marissa dies in a nasty one-car accident. When June runs into Marissa's hot brother at the cemetery six months after the crash, she makes a rash promise to carry out the dead girl's list of 20 things to do before she turned 25 (even though June is 34). The challenges that follow—running a 5K, kissing a stranger, "dare to go braless"—serve less to improve June's life than to highlight how unfortunate it is that she's taken up a stranger's goals instead of her own. Smolinski's Los Angeles is a well-executed set—June tilts at windmills as a writer for a ride-sharing nonprofit—but the most human characters in it are June's tyrannical and calculating boss and her secretly sensitive, underused brother. Though completing the list is a transformative experience for June, the leadup fizzles.
Amazon.com Review Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.
Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.
The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely.
From Publishers Weekly
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.
Childhood is a magical time. Jean Naggar spent hers in Cairo and England in an enchanted world, protected by her large and loving family, unaware that the harsh reality of the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 would infiltrate life within her garden walls to change the lives of the Jews of Egypt forever. SIPPING FROM THE NILE brings to vibrant life the many rich facets of an opulent multicultural society in a post-colonial world. It is an unforgettable story of love and loss, a lyrical evocation of a time and place engulfed in the turbulence of politics, war and religion, illuminated with lush descriptions of food, clothes, customs, houses, landscapes, and the unique individuals that peopled a vast extended family. Expelled from their homes and their lives, Sephardic Jews from Arab lands have inserted a different immigrant experience into the American legend.
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Interview with Jean Naggar, Sipping From The Nile
Before we begin our interview, Jean, I want to thank you. I have admired your work as a literary agent for years, and was thrilled to have met you in New York City. I felt as though I was meeting a superhero that I had long admired! Thank you for sharing your memoir with us. It was beautifully written and engaging. I could not put it down.
Interview questions for Jean Naggar, Sipping From The Nile:
Q. You have a long, very reputable career as a literary agent. What led you to put that aside (so to speak) and write your memoir?
I indeed founded JVNLA (the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc.) in 1978 and in fact did not curtail my activities as an agent during the years that I wrote and rewrote Sipping From The Nile. I had wanted to be a writer from an early age, but life and living took over and the desire simmered on a back-burner for many years. When I became a grandmother, I began to realize how very different my childhood had been from anything my grandchildren would know or could imagine, and I began to record for them, memories of a past I had closed off and of the people who filled my childhood and who still live in my heart, but whom they will never know. I wrote and revised and rewrote and cut and polished in stolen hours for several years. It was a labor of love, and very hard labor too. I am still very active in the literary agency, but no longer accept any new clients. Taking care of my client list takes a lot of time, but leaves me the time to think of writing more.
Q. Your family was built on traditions and your family experienced closeness with aunts, uncles, and cousins that is not seen very often here in America. Speaking generally, of course, how do you feel about the typical American family values, and how they differ from the family relationship and values that you were brought up with?
From what I have observed, I think that typical family values across cultural divides continue to place an emphasis on a moral compass, a good education, and a loving home climate. Where I see a difference in the ways that my children have grown up is in the sense of inifinite possibility that surrounds them, and their unquestioning acceptance of freedom to explore beyond tradition and social demands. Families in America reflect the mosaic of their differences, but there is a sense throughout that many limits to achievement and success are self-imposed and are not a part of the social structure.
Q. When your family left Egypt, you had to forgo your assets. When you remember this time, what do you think of? What do you feel was the biggest loss to your family—the emotional loss of the traditions and such that you had built, or the financial loss of what you had to leave behind?
My parents somehow instilled in us that we carried our home and traditions in ourselves, and that they were not bound by walls or circumstances. The greatest loss suffered by my family and by all the Jews of Arab lands was not the loss of their material possessions - although that was sometimes great - but the sudden disappearance of a way of life and of large, close-knit extended families scattered abruptly and permanently all over the world.
Q. When you were writing your memoir, what emotions were evoked? Was it difficult or cathartic to write?
It was both difficult and ultimately cathartic. Writing about the loss of my father was the hardest thing to do, and I struggled for a long time before taking myself off somewhere alone for a couple of days, where I wrote and cried all night until it was done. The publishing of the book has given me a great sense of closure, and knowing that I have at last given space and meaning to those lost times and offered my grandchildren answers to questions they may not think of asking until it is too late, is both cathartic and deeply satisfying.
Q. What are your personal thoughts on boarding schools?
I know the boarding school experience helped to counterbalance an over- protective family environment, and was ultimately a positive force in my relationship with the world I later found myself in, but I did not enjoy the experience and did not send any of my three children to boarding school.
Q. If you could change one thing from your childhood, what would it be?
I would have liked to have had a sister/playmate close to my age.
Q. I know you lost your father when he was relatively young, and I am so sorry. Do you feel the tension of the times brought on his illness?
I definitely think so. He offered a sense of humor, optimism and faith in the future to us and to his world gone crazy, but the internal struggle must have produced terrible stress that later manifested itself physically and led to his death.
Q. Your memoir is quite a personal story. You generously brought us into your magnificent childhood and the turmoil that was going on around you. What do you hope readers will take from Sipping From The Nile?
I hope they will enjoy the stories, the descriptions of foods, customs, clothes and a vanished world. I also hope that Sipping From The Nile will add to a greater understanding of the history and past of the Jews of Egypt, and the dramatic events that led to the disappearance of ancient communities 80,000 strong within a few months. I hope that my book will be seen as both unique and universal, an unusual coming of age at a time and in a world that have disappeared forever.
Q. Looking back now, after writing the memoir, do you feel anything differently than you did when you first returned to Egypt?
Basically, a real sense of closure and of having mined my early life to expose a beloved past to those to whom it belongs and to those who would otherwise never have known that it had existed.
Q. What is your favorite memory from your childhood and/or adult life?
I have had quite a long life and I am grateful that it contains many fine memories. Childhood car trips with my family are among the best, but nothing tops my marriage to my husband and the births of each of my three children.
Q. Can we expect to read more from you?
I hope to be granted the time to write a novel. The story and characters have been whispering in my ear for many years. It may never see the light of day, but the satisfaction is in the struggle and the doing, right? I read somewhere that “every great accomplishment starts with the decision to try.” I have made that decision!
Q. Lastly, and this has nothing to do with your memoir, but it is a question I was asked during an interview and it really made me dig deep into my own mind; if you could have dinner with two people, living or dead, who would they be?
This may seem extraordinarily unambitious, but given the questions that surfaced as I wrote Sipping From The Nile and thought about my grandmothers, it would truly be a great wonder to be able to ask those questions of them as we had dinner together, and to come to know who they were beyond being my grandmothers now that I am a grandmother myself.
Thank you, Jean, for sharing your time, memories, and energy with us. I, for one, am a richer person for having read your book.
Thank you so much, Melissa, for your interest in my memoir and for your most interesting and thought-provoking questions.
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February 2011, Another Thing To Fall, by Laura Lippman
Another Thing to Fall
The California dream weavers have invaded Charm City with their cameras, their stars, and their controversy. . . .
When private investigator Tess Monaghan literally runs into the crew of the fledgling TV series Mann of Steel while sculling, she expects sharp words and evil looks, not an assignment. But the company has been plagued by a series of disturbing incidents since its arrival on location in Baltimore: bad press, union threats, and small, costly on-set "accidents" that have wreaked havoc with its shooting schedule. As a result, Mann's creator, Flip Tumulty, the son of a Hollywood legend, is worried for the safety of his young female lead, Selene Waites, and asks Tess to serve as her bodyguard/babysitter. Tumulty's concern may be well founded. Not long ago a Baltimore man was discovered dead in his own home, surrounded by photos of the beautiful, difficult superstar-in-the-making.
In the past, Tess has had enough trouble guarding her own body. Keeping a spoiled movie princess under wraps may be more than she can handle—even with the help of Tess's icily unflappable friend Whitney—since Selene is not as naive as everyone seems to think, and far more devious than she initially appears to be. This is not Tess's world. And these are not her kind of people, with their vanities, their self-serving agendas and invented personas, and their remarkably skewed visions of reality—from the series' aging, shallow, former pretty-boy leading man to its resentful, always-on-the-make cowriter to the officious young assistant who may be too hungry for her own good.
But the fish-out-of-water P.I. is abruptly pulled back in by an occurrence she's all too familiar with—murder. Suddenly the wall of secrets around Mann of Steel is in danger of toppling, leaving shattered dreams, careers, and lives scattered among the ruins—a catastrophe that threatens the people Tess cares about . . . and the city she loves.
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February: The Space Between Us, by Thrity Umrigar
The Space Between Us, by Thrity Umrigar
Literary Fiction
336 pages
Summary:
The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar's poignant novel about a wealthy woman and her downtrodden servant, offers a revealing look at class and gender roles in modern day Bombay. Alternatively told through the eyes of Sera, a Parsi widow whose pregnant daughter and son-in-law share her elegant home, and Bhima, the elderly housekeeper who must support her orphaned granddaughter, Umrigar does an admirable job of creating two sympathetic characters whose bond goes far deeper than that of employer and employee.
When we first meet Bhima, she is sharing a thin mattress with Maya, the granddaughter upon whom high hopes and dreams were placed, only to be shattered by an unexpected pregnancy and its disastrous consequences. As time goes on, we learn that Sera and her family have used their power and money time and time again to influence the lives of Bhima and Maya, from caring for Bhima's estranged husband after a workplace accident, to providing the funds for Maya's college education. We also learn that Sera's seemingly privileged life is not as it appears; after enduring years of cruelty under her mother-in-law's roof, she faced physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband, pain that only Bhima could see and alleviate. Yet through the triumphs and tragedies, Sera and Bhima always shared a bond that transcended class and race; a bond shared by two women whose fate always seemed to rest in the hands of others, just outside their control.
Told in a series of flashbacks and present day encounters,The Space Between Us gains strength from both plot and prose. A beautiful tale of tragedy and hope, Umrigar's second novel is sure to linger in readers' minds.
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January 2010, Breaking The Silence, Diane Chamberlain
January 2011, Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
From Publishers Weekly
The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers. (Aug.)
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January: The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes, by Diane Chamberlain
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes, by Diane Chamberlain
528 pages
Summary:
An unsolved murder.
A missing child.
A lifetime of deception.
In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.
CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth, and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies…
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July 2009, Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult
July 2009 Book Club Selection
Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult
Publisher's Review
Picoult bangs out another ripped-from-the-zeitgeist winner, this time examining a condemned inmate's desire to be an organ donor. Freelance carpenter Shay Bourne was sentenced to death for killing a little girl, Elizabeth Nealon, and her cop stepfather. Eleven years after the murders, Elizabeth's sister, Claire, needs a heart transplant, and Shay volunteers, which complicates the state's execution plans. Meanwhile, death row has been the scene of some odd events since Shay's arrival—an AIDS victim goes into remission, an inmate's pet bird dies and is brought back to life, wine flows from the water faucets. The author brings other compelling elements to an already complex plot line: the priest who serves as Shay's spiritual adviser was on the jury that sentenced him; Shay's ACLU representative, Maggie Bloom, balances her professional moxie with her negative self-image and difficult relationship with her mother. Picoult moves the story along with lively debates about prisoner rights and religion, while plumbing the depths of mother-daughter relationships and examining the literal and metaphorical meanings of having heart. The point-of-view switches are abrupt, but this is a small flaw in an impressive book.
Starred Review. Set in 17th-century China, See's fifth novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families. It figures into the plot that generations of young Chinese women, known as the lovesick maidens, became obsessed with The Peony Pavilion, and, in a Werther-like passion, many starved themselves to death. See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, etc.) offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China (including horrifying foot-binding scenes) and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals. Peony's vibrant voice, perfectly pitched between the novel's historical and passionate depths, carries her story beautifully—in life and afterlife.
Buy the Book Here USED for as little as $6!
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June 2010, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
Nine years ago, Molly Tanner witnessed a young girl's abduction in the busy city of Philadelphia, shifting her occasional clairvoyance into overdrive. Two days later, the girl's body was found, and Molly's life fell apart. Consumed by guilt for not acting upon her visions, and on the brink of losing her family, Molly escaped the torturous reminders in the city, fleeing to the safety of the close-knit rural community of Boyds, Maryland.
Molly's life is back on track, her son has begun college, and she and her husband have finally rekindled their relationship. Their fresh start is shattered when a seven-year-old girl disappears from a local park near Molly's home. Unable to turn her back on another child and troubled by memories of the past, Molly sets out to find her, jeopardizing the marriage she'd fought so hard to hold together. While unearthing clues and struggling to decipher her visions, Molly discovers another side of Boyds, where the residents--and the land itself--hold potentially lethal secrets, and exposes another side of her husband, one that threatens to tear them apart.
Product Details
Format: Kindle Edition , Published April 12, 2011, Solstice Publishing
File Size: 401 KB
Language: English
ASIN: B004WF5202
Paperback Edition due out May 5, 2011, ISBN 9780615477527
Reviews
In "Chasing Amanda" Melissa Foster guides us in helping Molly; wife, mother to a teenage son, search for a missing girl. The young girl has disappeared from their quiet, rural community; a place where things like this simply don't happen. For Molly, it's deja vu. Several years earlier, while living in Philadelphia, she witnessed a similar event. She did nothing at that time, and has been tormented by her inaction ever since.
Molly's special gift, or curse, is her clairvoyance. She can sometimes 'see' things that others cannot. In Philadelphia, she failed the little girl, whose body was found shortly after. Now, she promised herself that she would not make that mistake again. Molly persists, using her clairvoyance and sheer stubbornness in an effort to find the child. In doing so, Molly exposes her town's shameful secrets, presenting a conclusion to this story, that I never saw coming!
Melissa Foster's skill with her characters, drew me into the story immediately. The suspense that followed made this book a definite page-turner! By Nanascurse
This review is from: Chasing Amanda (Kindle Edition)
It amazes me that this is only the author's 2nd book and she has hit it 'right on' with both!
Chasing Amanda is such a different story than the author's 1st book so I wasn't sure what to expect. It had me from the 2nd page and in some instances I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. The story was very interesting, not a subject matter you read about often. There are not many books out there where the story is about someone who can "see" things and you can truly immerse yourself in the story, know that it could be real and keep thinking about it for days after you have finished the book.
I'm so glad I read this book and can't wait for the author's next book...keep them coming! Missreadsalot
Join The Women's Nest and chat with Melissa (aka Thinkhappy) daily.
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June's Selection: Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
This month’s book was selected by Thinkhappy!
Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe, Jenny Shortridge
Women's Fiction
Summary:
“An accomplished and superior novelist” (Statesman Journal) delivers a bittersweet book about a woman’s midlife crisis that asks: How does a good girl know when to finally let herself be bad?
When she learns that her college sweetheart husband has been seeing another woman, Mira Serafino’s perfect world is shattered and she wants no one, least of all her big Italian family, to know. She heads north—with no destination and little money— stopping only when her car breaks down in Seattle. She takes a job at the offbeat Coffee Shop at the Center of the Universe, where she’ll experience a terrifying but invigorating freedom, and meet someone she’ll come to love: the new Mira.
Buy it here USED for under $6!
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March 2010, The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton
The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton
Fiction
In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn’t know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase. When the girl, called Nell, grows up, she starts to piece together bits of her story, but just as she’s on the verge of going to England to trace the mystery to its source, her grandaughter, Cassandra, is left in her care. When Nell dies, Cassandra finds herself the owner of a cottage in Cornwall, and makes the journey to England to finally solve the puzzle of Nell’s origins. Shifting back and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling, old-fashioned novel, as well-cushioned as a Victorian country house, replete with family secrets, stories-within-stories, even a maze and a d**kensian rag-and-bone shop. All the pieces don’t quite mesh, but it’s a satisfying read overall, just the thing for readers who like multigenerational sagas with a touch of mystery. --Mary Ellen Quinn --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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March 2011, Cutting for Stone,
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
Amazon Review:
That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history. There is also a sense of great foreboding; by the midpoint of the story, one dreads what will further befall these characters. The foreshadowing is present in the chapter titles, too--‘The School of Suffering’ not least among them! Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement.--John Irving
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March: Here She Lies - by Kate Pepper
Author:
Kate Pepper
This month's book was selected by member TK4Life! Thank you, TK!
Here She Lies, by Kate Pepper
Mystery/Thriller
Summary:
When she discovers evidence of her husband's infidelity, Annie Goodman's life is thrown asunder and she flees with her young daughter to the one person she has always trusted-her twin sister, Julie. In this safe harbor, the sisters quickly become as close as they were as children. But when Annie tries to get a job, her safe harbor turns rocky-she's arrested, her credit cards are stolen, and her very identity is in question. Seeking solace with Julie, she finds her twin sister gone-along with her daughter.
It soon becomes clear that nothing Annie previously believed is certain-and that she is the only one who can find her child, and reclaim the life that someone has stolen from her...
Please join us in the Book Club in our Women's Forum for club discussions. General comments about the book may be left below.
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March: Still Alice, by Lisa Genova
Alert! Mark your calendars!
Lisa Genova will discuss Still Alice with Book Club members March 30th, 8pm.
Still Alice, by Lisa Genova
Literary Fiction
320 pages
Summary:
When Dr. Alice Howland first starts forgetting things like words when giving a speech, she thinks it might be because of menopause. But when she gets lost jogging near her house, on a route she has taken many times, she knows something is seriously wrong and seeks medical help. Not quite fifty, she is totally unprepared for the diagnosis - early onset Alzheimer's. As the disease progresses, Alice and her husband John learn everything they can about the disease and treatments, but Alzheimer's quickly takes its toll on both Alice and her family.
"Still Alice" is a beautifully written, heartbreaking novel about the devastating affect Alzheimer's has on its victims and their families. Author Lisa Genova's choice of Alice - young, in shape, and intelligent (she's a Psychiatry Professor at Harvard) - shows that Alzheimer's can strike anyone, not just the elderly. The book is written from Alice's viewpoint, but Genova does a good job of showing the affect of Alzheimer's not only on Alice, but how her family (John, and their children - Anna, Tom, and Lydia) struggle with the changes in Alice. Genova does an excellent job of describing what is going on in Alice's head as the dementia increases. In fact, Genova does such a good job that I sometimes forgot the book was fiction and not about a real person.
"Still Alice" takes place over a relatively short period of time (September 2002 to September 2005) and it is frightening how fast the Alzheimer's takes over Alice. Genova skillfully captures the bewilderment Alice feels and there are some moments in the book that are very moving - especially a moment involving a black rug and a moment involving a message a healthier Alice left for a sicker Alice. The reaction of Alice's family as they deal not only with her having Alzheimer's but the fact that her children may inherit the disease is very realistic. Inevitably, of course, life goes on and Genova expertly shows Alice's family as they move on with their lives, even if readers won't always agree with their actions. If I have any quibble with the book, it's that it is one chapter too long - the second to last chapter ended on a poignant note and I think Genova should have stopped the book there.
"Still Alice" is a moving tale about the devastating affect Alzheimer's can have on a family. (A portion of the sale of each novel will go to the Alzheimer's Association.)
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May 2009, Riding With The Queen, by Jennie Shortridge
Review
A poignant, riveting adventure full of moments that are touching and insightful, but never predictable. A fresh, unique character. -- Caren Lissner, author of
Full of insight and dead-on wit, [Shortridge] morphs everyday language into something richly poetic. Sexy, edgy, and written with grace… -- Statesman Journal, November 16, 2003
Like the novel she inhabits, Tallie Beck is funny, sexy, smart, and heartbreakingly real. A wonderful debut. -- Louise Redd, author of
Tenderly and without ever blinking, Shortridge evokes the psychic damage of childhood--and the will to survive. A life-affirming must-read. -- Caroline Hwang, author of
Witty, engaging, Shortridge writes with an easy grace and a quiet authority…Keep an eye on this writer. -- Summer Wood
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May 2010, The Year of Fog, Michelle Richmond
UPCOMING EVENT:
Chat with author Michelle Richmond.
May 26, 6pm EST in our Author Discussion forum.
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In this spare page-turner, Richmond (Dream of the Blue Room) draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing. Photographer Abby Mason stops on San Francisco's Ocean Beach with her fiancé Jake's six-year-old daughter, Emma, to photograph a seal pup; by the time Abby looks up, Emma has disappeared. Abby, who narrates, flashes back to her growing relationship with high school teacherJake, and sketches its transformation over the course of the search. Emma's mother, Lisbeth (who abandoned the family three years earlier), wants back into Jake's life—even as he is giving up hope on finding Emma. Abby delves into the bereft missing children subculture and into the vagaries of memory. A hypnotist helps Abby unearth promising details of that singular last day with Emma, but the information requires major follow-through from Abby. The book's twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. Richmond develops the principle characters, and Abby's dysfunctional parents make for sharply drawn secondaries, as do local surfers. The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby's clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout.
Allen's latest (after The Sugar Queen) takes the familiar setup of a young protagonist returning to the small town where her elusive mother was raised, and subverts it by sprinkling just enough magic into the narrative to keep things lively but short of saccharine. Seventeen-year-old Emily Benedict, intent on learning more about her mother, Dulcie, moves in with her grandfather, but is disappointed to find that her grandfather doesn't want to talk much about Dulcie. She soon discovers, though, that many still hold a grudge against Dulcie for the way she treated an old sweetheart before dumping him and disappearing. Luckily, Dulcie's high school adversary, Julia Winterson, back in town to pay down her deceased father's debt, takes a shine to Emily. She's working another quest as well: baking cakes every day with the hope that they'll somehow attract the daughter she gave up for adoption years ago. There are love interests, big family secrets, and magical happenings (color-changing wallpaper, mysterious lights) aplenty as Allen charts the spiraling inter-generational stories, bringing everything together in an unexpected way. (Mar.)
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May: The Knitting Circle - Ann Hood
This month’s book was selected by Thinkhappy!
The Knitting Circle, by Ann Hood
Fiction
Summary:
While mourning the death of her daughter, Hood (An Ornithologist's Guide to Life) learned to knit. In her comeback novel, Mary Baxter, living in Hood's own Providence, R.I., loses her five-year-old daughter to meningitis. Mary and her husband, Dylan, struggle to preserve their marriage, but the memories are too painful, and the healing too difficult. Mary can't focus on her job as a writer for a local newspaper, and she bitterly resents her emotionally and geographically distant mother, who relocated to Mexico years earlier. Still, it's at her mother's urging that Mary joins a knitting circle and discovers that knitting soothes without distracting. The structure of the story quickly becomes obvious: each knitter has a tragedy that she'll reveal to Mary, and if there's pleasure to be had in reading a novel about grief, it's in guessing what each woman's misfortune is and in what order it will be exposed. The strength of the writing is in the painfully realistic portrayal of the stages of mourning, and though there's a lot of knitting, both actual and metaphorical, the terminology's simple enough for nonknitters to follow and doesn't distract from the quick pace of the narrative.
Ann Hood lost her own young daughter to a rare form of strep. This is a semi-autobiographical novel.
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May: The Red Tent
This month’s book was selected by Thinkhappy!
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
Historical/Fiction
Summary:
The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob's daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah--all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery.
"Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges," Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. "They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember." Remembering women's earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it's been said that The Red Tent is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God's daughters, instead of her sons. --Gail Hudson--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Novembe 2010, Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, February 2009: The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state. --Mari Malcolm--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Chris Cleave's Little Bee works because the unflinching, brutal story balances an outwardly political motive with rich, deep character development (and even some welcome humor), focusing narrowly on events before broadening to reveal some larger truths. Cleave's firm grasp of human nature and his unsparing disdain for injustice allow him to articulate lives as different as those of Little Bee and the less-likeable Sarah; both characters, though, are unforgettable. Comparisons between Cleave and fellow Brits Ian McEwan and John Banville are apt. The only dissent came from the San Francisco Chronicle, which took issue with the narrative voices and the rushed pace of the story. All others agreed, however, that Cleave's sophomore effort is, as the Chicago Sun-Times succinctly put it, "a loud shout of talent."
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah’s Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee’s elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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November 2009, The Blind Side, Evolution of a Game, by Michael Lewis
The Blind Side, Evolution of a Game
by Michael Lewis
Biography
Summary:
Opening on November 20, 2009, as a major motion picture, starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw. In theaters in time for Thanksgiving, The Blind Side is a feature movie based on Michael’s Lewis’s New York Times bestseller, produced by Alcon Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The Blind Side tells the inspirational story of Michael Oher, a homeless black teen taken under the wing of the Touhys, a wealthy white Memphis family. Oher’s size and speed on the football field bring him accolades. But learning the game’s strategy and making it as a student take the help of his new family, coaches, and tutor.
Sandra Bullock stars as Leigh Anne Touhy, the sharp-witted and compassionate matriarch. Tim McGraw stars as her sports-enthusiast husband. Oscar winner Kathy Bates plays Miss Sue, Oher’s indefatigable tutor. Quinton Aaron has his first major role as Oher. John Lee Hanc**k, who directed The Rookie and The Alamo, writes and directs the film.
Michael Oher was just drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft by the Baltimore Ravens. This edition includes a new afterword bringing Oher’s life up to date through college and the NFL.
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November: A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
432 pages
Literary Fiction
Summary:
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters. (May)
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October 2009, The Lace Reader,
The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry
Mystery, 416 pages,
Review:
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry's portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts--with its fascinating cast of eccentrics--is reportedly spot-on. Some of its stranger residents include generations of Whitney women, with a gift for seeing the future in the lace they make. Towner Whitney, back to Salem from self-imposed exile on the West Coast, has plans for recuperation that evaporate with her great-aunt Eva's mysterious drowning. Fighting fear from a traumatic adolescence she can barely remember, Towner digs in for answers. But questions compound with the disappearance of a young woman under the thrall of a local fire-and-brimstone preacher, whose history of violence against Whitney women makes the situation personal for Towner. Her role in cop John Rafferty's investigation sparks a tentative romance. And as they scramble to avert disaster, the past that had slipped through the gaps in Towner's memory explodes into the present with a violence that capsizes her concept of truth. Readers will look back at the story in a new light, picking out the clues in this complex, lovely piece of work. --Mari Malcolm
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October 2010, When Autumn Leaves, Amy Foster
When Autumn Leaves, by Amy Foster
Review
"In the tiny town of Avening in the Pacific Northwest, life hums with a peculiar sort of energy. Some call the town enchanted; others call it quirky. But all would agree that it is a special sort of hamlet, populated by some rather intriguing people. Perhaps the most intriguing is the town witch and wise woman. An individual of extraordinary, even magical talents, Autumn Avening is ready to retire-and must find a replacement from among the local denizens. With one year to choose, Autumn begins keeping an ever closer watch on her friends and neighbors, looking for just the right candidate. Through her eyes, we get intimate glimpses of the locals of Avening-strong men and women whose stories are both heartwarming and heartbreaking. VERDICT Loose ends in Foster's strong debut indicate sequel potential for those who enjoy following characters from book to book. Fans of Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic) and Joanne Harris (Chocolat) will love getting to know the residents of this cozy, charming little town. Highly recommended." Library Journal (starred)
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October: Eating Heaven, by Jennie Shortridge
Eating Heaven, by Jennie Shortridge
Women's Fiction
Summary
Nothing gets Eleanor Samuels's heart racing like a double scoop of mocha fudge chunk. Sure, the magazine writer may have some issues aside from food, but she isn't quite ready to face them. Then her beloved Uncle Benny falls ill, and what at first seems scary and daunting becomes a blessing in disguise. Because while she cooks and cares for him-and enjoys a delicious flirtation with a new chef in town-Eleanor begins to uncover some long-buried secrets about her emotionally frayed family and may finally get the chance to become the woman she's always wanted to be.
From the Author Eating Heaven is a story inspired by the time I spent with my dad and stepmother Jeanne when she was ill with pancreatic cancer. She didn't have long to live, and not knowing what else I could do, I asked, "If you could have anything in the world to eat, what would it be?" And then I'd make it for her.
In Eating Heaven, Eleanor is a lonely food magazine writer reduced to writing "Lighten Up Your French Favorites Until They Taste Like Cardboard" recipes. When her favorite uncle, Benny, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she becomes his primary caregiver and tries, as I did, to provide solace, comfort and love through her cooking. At the same time, she's fighting her own battles with food, with body image and self acceptance. I wanted to write a story for the rest of us—those who will never look like the pop celebrities of the moment—and suggest that maybe we shouldn't even try to. Shocking, I know, but like Eleanor, I propose a revolution.
Enough with revolution, this is also a story about falling in love with unavailable men, sisters who have drifted too far apart, a cat named Buddy, the luscious Pacific Northwest, and an old family secret that is slowly revealed.
I hope you enjoy it!
Exclusive Member Chat with Jennie Shortridge - Tuesday, October 28, 7pm EST
Where: Women's Forum - Book Club - Author Discussions
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September '09, The Help, by Katherine Stockett
September '09 Book Club Selection
The Help, by Katherine Stockett
464 Pages
Literary Fiction
Summary
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn's new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.
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September 2010, The Last Child, by John Hart, and Summer Shift, by Lynne Kiele Bonasia
As with her first novel, Some Assembly Required (2008), Bonasia has set Summer Shift on her home turf of Cape Cod. The story centers on Mary Hopkins, the owner of a local clam bar, who is still laden with feelings of guilt surrounding her husband’s death in a car accident more than a decade past. Over the course of a single summer, events combine to draw Mary out among the living again, including a second chance at love. Bonasia is not a particularly suspenseful writer—few revelations or the ultimate outcome will surprise the reader—and she juggles one too many subplots. Yet she has a gift for vivid and inventive descriptions and a clear affection for and understanding of her characters, who come across as flesh-and-blood individuals as opposed to typical small-town eccentrics. It’s impossible not to root for Mary, particularly as she copes with a beloved great-aunt’s onset of Alzheimer’s, which Bonasia handles with tenderness and poignancy. --Patty Wetli
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Art Taylor A year and a day have passed since the abduction of 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon, and her twin brother, Johnny, has never felt more alone. His father abandoned the family soon after the disappearance, and his mother has all but vanished into a haze of drinking, drugs and abusive s*x. The police detective who investigated the case hovers over the remnants of the family like a watchful angel, but his attentions are unwelcome; he hasn't found the girl. In fact, Johnny's only true friend is his frail young classmate Jack, and even he wavers between supporting Johnny's faith that Alyssa's alive and knowing that she's gone forever. But then a clue falls from the sky -- literally: A biker hit by a car and thrown from a bridge lands almost at Johnny's feet. "I found her," he says in his dying words. "The girl that was taken." John Hart's third novel covers only a few days in the life of a North Carolina town, but the minutes all seem breathless. Every few chapters bring new twists and startling revelations: another girl's disappearance, bodies and then more bodies, a surprising series of connections that casts new light on everything that's come before and throws darkening shadows over what's ahead. The young boy at the story's center is a magnificent creation, Huck Finn channeled through "Lord of the Flies," and as a detective in his own right he proves as driven and passionate as any mystery fan could hope for. Along the way, the author returns to the central themes of his first two novels -- class divisions and the bonds of family -- but with a broader scope, delving with grace and empathy into the inner lives of characters across a wide spectrum: policemen balancing the personal and the professional, an escaped convict who hears the voice of God, troubled children growing up too fast, parents undone by grief. And where those earlier novels -- even his Edgar Award-winning "Down River" -- seemed mired in frequent melodrama, this new book strips away the more overt sentimentality and proves all the more poignant and heartbreaking. Hart is still far too young for "The Last Child" to be called a crowning achievement, but the novel's ambition, emotional breadth and maturity make it an early masterpiece in a career that continues to promise great things. Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
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September: The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher
Fiction
Summary:
On the heels of a hasty wartime marriage, Penelope Keeling is left to repent at leisure in the English seaside town of Porthkerris, where her artist father and her French mother are spending the duration of World War II. Safe in the embracing arms of that warm household, Penelope forgets her sour husband and takes a lover, and in that relationship, too, she weathers the war's privations and its hardest blows. In a beautifully detailed family saga that shifts effortlessly back and forth in time, Pilcher (Under Gemini) recounts Penelope's story and that of her three children. When their grandfather's work suddenly comes into vogue, Nancy, obsessed over status, and sleek Noel, adept at getting the most and giving the least, join in urging their mother to sell The Shell Seekers, a painting that gives her great joy. Only Olivia, a cool and collected magazine editor, refuses to be party to their barely concealed avarice. Pilcher's 13th book is a satisfying and savory family novel, in which rich layers of description and engagingly flawed characters more than make up for the occasional cliche.
**This book is highly recommended by Thinkhappy!
On the heels of a hasty wartime marriage, Penelope Keeling is left to repent at leisure in the English seaside town of Porthkerris, where her artist father and her French mother are spending the duration of World War II. Safe in the embracing arms of that warm household, Penelope forgets her sour husband and takes a lover, and in that relationship, too, she weathers the war's privations and its hardest blows. In a beautifully detailed family saga that shifts effortlessly back and forth in time, Pilcher (Under Gemini) recounts Penelope's story and that of her three children. When their grandfather's work suddenly comes into vogue, Nancy, obsessed over status, and sleek Noel, adept at getting the most and giving the least, join in urging their mother to sell The Shell Seekers, a painting that gives her great joy. Only Olivia, a cool and collected magazine editor, refuses to be party to their barely concealed avarice. Pilcher's 13th book is a satisfying and savory family novel, in which rich layers of description and engagingly flawed characters more than make up for the occasional cliche.
