The 19th Wife

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff is an amazing tale of the Mormons and polygamy. Ebershoff is a master storyteller, weaving in the history of Mormonism and polygamy with a current day tale from a compound in Utah.

It is clear that The 19th Wife was well researched and even though it is published as a work of fiction, you get a better understanding of the Mormon religion.

Ebershoff weaves in the history of Ann Eliza, Brigham Young's 19th wife, through a memoir of her own (she did in fact publish a memoir after leaving the church, but it is not completely and fully replicated here). Between that is the story of BeckyLyn and her excommunicated son, Jordan. BeckyLyn has been accused of killing her husband - and incidentally she is his 19th wife.

You feel pulled along by both tales and are curious to learn more. There are some holes in the story, but after reading the interview with the author at the back of the book, those appear to due to lack of information, not any error by the author.

The 19th Wife is the type of book I love, one that has interesting characters, a good plot and gives you a view into a world you don't have access to.

Family Album

I enjoyed The Photograph by Penelope Lively and was interested in reading her latest novel, Family Album.

Family Album centers around the Harper family who occupy a sprawling Edwardian house, Allersmead, outside London. The novel is told from the varying perspective of the six children, parents, au pair and other family members and jumps back and forth across the years.

Lively sometimes alludes to life changing events which turn out to be mundane and what turns out to be the family secret is handled as just a fact. But all of that just leads you to believe that this family is like all others - with various issues and unforgotten hurts.

Lively is a wonderful author who is a master at examining the small and large events form one's vision of herself.

Room

Room by Emma Donoghue has been much talked about since it was published. I don't want to give too much away of the plot, but it is the story of Jack who has just turned 5 and who's entire world is Room.

He occupies Room with his mother and they have a routine to keep their days full. While it is not clear to Jack that there is a world outside Room, it is clear to the reader outside the Room the circumstances his mother and then he found themselves in.

Donoghue does a wonderful job of imagining what the world would be like for a child in captivity and what might happen when he is exposed to the World.

She also does an amazing job of telling the story from the point of view of five-year-old Jack.

Cutting for Stone

I started Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese a month ago. I read about a hundred and fifty pages, but I just didn't connect to it. After talking about it with one of the women in my book club, I decided to give it another try.

It must have been my mood or a result of a hectic October, because when I picked it back up where I had put it down, I was sucked in immediately.

Shiva and Marion are twins who were born to a nun and a surgeon in Ethiopia. Their mother dies as a result of their tragic birth and their famous surgeon father disappears. The twins are raised on the site of the Missing Hospital by Hema and Ghosh two of the other staff doctors.

The story is told from Marion's perspective as the boys grow up in the warm cocoon of Missing yet always wondering what happened to their father and feeling the absence of their biological mother.

By the end of the novel, I was wondering about Shiva and Marion whenever I had to put it down to work or sleep. A story that mixes medicine, the history of Ethiopia and a story of family, Cutting for Stone is beautifully written and heartbreaking.

The Good Earth

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck is a novel I had not read but had been sitting on my shelf for a while. I am glad I finally read it, as it is a story with a wonderful message.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

I have been a fan of David Sedaris for years. I look forward to new essays and every Christmas revisit Holidays on Ice.

His latest offering is a departure from his essays as he takes on fiction, but Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is told in true Sedaris fashion. The stories use animals, yet the behavior and topics are truly human. Some of the stories are quite graphic and sordid, but all are funny.

From the two storks talking about their children asking where babies come from (the mice bring them, duh!) to the new lab rat who blames the dying lab rat's illness on his bad attitude, they are smart and witty.

This book has gotten some mixed reviews, so it's probably not for the uptight and unimaginative

Born Round

Born Round by Frank Bruni is a wonderfully entertaining story from this journalist and former NYT food critic. Growing up in a large Italian family that believes in eating well and eating a lot, Bruni struggled from a young age with his weight.

Bruni tells an honest and funny tale of his struggles throughout his life with weight, exercise and food. When offered the position as the NYT food critic, his love of food and his career intersect and while you fear that he will spiral out of control like in the past, he is able to take that love of food to a new level.

I recommend this to anyone who loves food and has struggled with their weight.

Zeitoun

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers was our book club book for September. I was reluctant to read a story about Katrina (I think I avoid books that feel like they are capitalizing on a national tragedy), but this was Dave Eggers so I should have known better than to be worried.

All the proceeds from the book go to various organizations related to New Orleans or that are important to the Zeitoun family and Eggers does an amazing job of telling a story of terrible injustice.

The Zeitoun's lived in New Orleans for years, are Muslim and have a family contracting and painting business. Abdulrahman, the father and a Syrian-American, has much to lose and take care of, so he sends his wife and children out of the city while he stays behind as the storm threatens.

His days before and after the storm are calmer than you would expect, but once the levees break, life for Zeitoun changes. Eventually, he is arrested along with 3 other men and held in horrendous conditions. They are never clearly charged, never told why they are being held - there are indications that someone thought that were terrorists.

I was horrified that this treatment occurred in this country and glad in the end that I read this story and that it was brought to me in the capable hands of Eggers.

The Quiet Room, Beautiful Boy and Tweak

I can't believe my last post was August! I have been reading, I just haven't been blogging.

I am going to do my best to catch up, so get ready for a number of new posts!

I read a number of memoirs in late August/early September. They were all stories about dealing with mental illness. As I consider my career change to social work/counseling, I want to do any "prep" work as I wait to apply to programs (and hopefully get in!), so I thought I would read some stories of mental illness.

The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller tells her tale of dealing with schizophrenia staring in her late teens into her 20s and beyond. Her story is sad and heartbreaking as she tries to find help and relief from a disease that was not well understood. While the story jumps around from different point of view, the best are Lori's chapters which feel as if you are reading Lori's journal and getting a raw view of her world of mental illness.

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff provides the parent's view as they watch their child delve into the dark world of drugs. Sheff's son Nic grows up in Northern California, but spends summers with his mother in LA. Sheff tries to determine if there is a causal link between the separation of his families and his drug addiction, but like most mental illnesses, does not get a definitive answer.

Sheff is a journalist, so his story is well written and he researches the various aspects of drug addiction and recovery - particularly methamphetamine which is his son's drug of choice. Beautiful Boy is a beautiful story of a father's love.

After reading his father's account, I tried to read Nic's young adult account, Tweak. Unfortunately, reading Tweak was too much for me. Nic's candid details made me too sad, too worried for all the teens in my life, so I wasn't able to finish it.

I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith was our August book club selection and what a precious find it was.

Written in the 1940s, I Capture the Castle tells the story of the Mortmain family, living in a dilapidated castle in the English countryside. The story is told through a series of journals by Cassandra Mortmain who relates the tale of her eccentric family.

Her father who was the famous author of a novel and is now suffering from writer's block; her sister Rose who flits about and becomes engaged to Simon Cotton the American who has inherited the estate that includes the castle; Topaz their bohemian stepmother who wants very much to be needed; ; handsome Stephen who has lived at the castle since he was a child and continues to do odd jobs around the place but who is desperately in love with Cassandra.

Cassandra herself is a sweet and witty 17 year old, though her writing and inexperience makes her feel younger as you read about life in the castle through her eyes.

This was a book I wanted to savor.

The Forgotten Garden and The House at Riverton

The Forgotten Garden and The House at Riverton by Kate Morton were two books that had been recommended to me a few times.

I read The Forgotten Garden first and was instantly smitten. Four year old Nell is found alone on the docks after a voyage from England to Australia. She is taken in by the port master and his wife and grows up knowing little of where she came from or the adventure that brought her to the only life she knows.

Years later, she finds out that she is not the port master's daughter and begins a journey to make sense of the snippets of memories she has. Life gets in the way as Nell takes in her granddaughter who eventually takes up the search and learns of her grandmother's true identity and heritage. Morton does a wonderful job of jumping back and forth through time to tell the story and keep you enthralled.

The House at Riverton was Morton's first novel and while it was compelling and also contained a mystery, I didn't love it as much. It was more of an Upstairs Downstairs or Gosford Park story - with young Grace arriving at Riverton to be a maid at the house where her mother worked for years. Grace becomes enamored with the children who visit the house - David, Hannah and Emmeline - and becomes faithful to them as a maid and secret keeper until the end of her life when she is compelled into memories by the creation of a film about a fateful night at the estate.

Born to Run

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall is one of those books that is known very well by a certain group of people - in this case runners. I was told it would change the way I run and I believe it has.

Born to Run centers on the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico who are infamous for their ability to run for multiple days in leather sandals. McDougall sets out to understand what makes the Tarahumara capable of such feats as well as their ability to stay healthy and serene while he hurts from just running a few miles.

McDougall does a wonderful job in pulling the reader along between history, biology and anthropology, tying all of it together in the world's greatest footrace through the Copper Mountains.

A Short History of Women

A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert was named one of the top 10 best books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review, so I had high hopes.

Sadly, I think the book should be retitled to A Short History of Miserable Women. The novel chronicles five generations of women beginning in 1914 with Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a suffragette who is dying of starvation for her cause. She leaves behind two children who are now orphans - Thomas and Evelyn (Evie).

The novel jumps to Thomas' daughter Dorothy Townsend Barrett in Delaware who is in her 70s and is creating a revolution of her own by photographing the coffins of dead soldiers returning from what we assume is the war in Iraq illegally and being arrested.

We also meet Dorothy's daughter's Caroline and Liz toward the end of the novel who are struggling with the definition of motherhood in the early 21st century.

In the end, that is what the novel is really about. Women as mothers. Women as figures in history - or not. And the desire to have something more. The unfortunate part is that in the five generations of Townsend women, you never find a woman who is even partially satisfied with her life. It is depressing to think that as women being unhappy and dissatisfied is our lot in life.

Her Fearful Symmetry

I don't think I realized when I picked it up that Her Fearful Symmetry was written by Audrey Niffenegger author of The Time Traveler's Wife. I have not read The Time Traveler's Wife but knew that there was an element of surrealism to it.


Her Fearful Symmetry was touted as "mesmerizing", "chilling" and "addictive."

The story is set primarily in London when an aunt they have never met (their mother's twin sister, Elspeth) leaves her flat to Julia and Valentina, sisters, twins and somewhat lost 20 year olds. The inheritance comes with two conditions - they must live in the flat for a year and their parents are not to enter the flat.

The girl's embark on a year long adventure just after their 21st birthday. Julia is the more dominate twin, Valentina she calls "the Mouse" and as Valentina yearns to enroll in design school, it is Julia who convinces her she cannot do anything alone. But in Elspeth's apartment they begin to go separate ways - Julia spends time in the upstairs apartment of Martin an agoraphobic who suffers from severe OCD while Valentina begins to spend time with Robert, downstairs neighbor and Elspeth's former lover.

When they are in the apartment, they are not alone. Elspeth's ghost has taken up residence and eventually learns to communicate with her nieces and Robert. One secret she will not answer, even in death, is why she and the girl's mother never spoke and why the girl's never met her.

The story has a level of implausibility that I was able to overlook through the strong characters and the building plot, but then when the secrets are revealed and the climax of the story reached, I was annoyed that I had let myself be sucked into this fantastical story.

I assume that this is Niffenegger's style and it has made her successful, but there were such good characters that I wish she could have come up with a less absurd ending.

The Great Fire

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard has been on my book shelf for quite a while and I was suddenly motivated to pare down my unread books, so I figured a good place to start was with this National Book Award winner.

The novel is set in Asia in the late 1940s, a culture and period I didn't know much about. One could assume that there was great devastation in Japan after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but Hazzard assumes too much prior knowledge of the time and place she sets her story in.

Aldred Leith, an English man in Japan to survey the damage, is the main character who falls in love with a young teenage girl, Helen. The romance between Aldred and Helen is sweet and the loss of Helen's sickly brother Ben bittersweet. But it takes too long to get there and then when you do the resolution of the affair is anti-climatic

Apologize, Apologize

I finished Apologize, Apologize by Elizabeth Kelly last night and I wish I hadn't. I didn't want it to end!

Apologize, Apologize is about the quirky Flanagan family living in a big house on Martha's Vineyard. Anais Flanagan is the daughter of Peregrine Lowell, a newspaper magnet who funds her anti-establishment lifestyle. Anais is married to an Irish immigrant, Charlie Flangan, and is such a dog lover that she names her sons Collie and Bingo.

The novel is told from the perspective of Collie who takes after his grandfather in his rule-following, conservatism rather than his free spirited mother and brother. Bingo is the one his mother adores, the beautiful and risk taking son. As the boys grow up in a house overrun with big and little dogs and with a drunk father and uncle providing comic relief, one minute you are laughing at the absurdity of the household and then thinking "oh my, how did they survive" the next.

Kelly's writing is wonderful and the wit that runs through the novel makes it so enjoyable, but when it is over it is the emotional connection with Collie that had been created in ~300 pages is surprising.

Bright-Sided

I read Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich for a non-fiction book club in NJ (hopefully I will be able to make future meetings of this splinter book club).

Overall, I liked the book and Ehrenreich's challenge to a standard part of the American psyche made a lot of sense to me. I think that the idea of positive thinking started out with good intentions - when you are mired in negativity, it's hard to get out of it and when you believe things can turn around they can. But thinking positively will not raise you out of poverty, will not cure an illness. And thinking something certainly doesn't manifest it into being (The Secret, the law of attraction).

When I finished the book I thought, thank you Ms. Ehrenreich for saying it's okay to not be positive all the time. That to have bad moments or negative thoughts is what makes us human. I have so many friends who have experienced challenges in life and the pressure they feel (and I too have felt) to keep up the happy facade is heartbreaking.

When we discussed the book at book club, I heard some differing views and it did alter some of my opinions about certain sections. There was discussion that Ehrenreich was still angry about the experiences she had when writing Nickel and Dimed and this was really a diatribe against the American class system.

I agree that there was an underlying feeling of frustration, but in the end I would still recommend the book to friends, especially those who have experienced some loss or adversity in life. I would hope they would experience what I did - a little understanding into why we as Americans encourage each other to "turn that frown upside down" and why that's not necessarily healthy or helpful to our development as people and a country.

Assorted Mystery Novels

Maybe it was the Stieg Larsson novels or the business of life and relatively mundane projects at work, but I've been consuming mystery novels voraciously as of late.

I started with Benjamin Black's Christine Falls. Black is the pseudonym for John Banville the Booker Prize winning author, so I had high hopes for his mysteries. But Christine Falls felt less like a mystery and more like delving into a strange family history to answer "why". Never are you on the edge of your seat - always a requirement for my favorite mysteries.

After taking Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline from my parent's house, I've read another of her mysteries (Lady Killer) and have two more on the shelf. Scottoline's characters are sassy, strong women which makes for fun reading. The first two I read featured Benny Rosato and the associates at her young law firm. It looks like Scottoline took the characters in different directions through four or five books and recently revisited those characters, so there could be more ahead.

Greg Iles' Dead Sleep is our June book club book. It's our departure from our usual literary fiction, but Iles is a great mystery writer and leaves you guessing along the way. Dead Sleep starts with Jordan Glass, a world-renowned photojournalist, happens on an exhibit of a series of paintings known as "The Sleeping Women," she is stunned to discover that one of the models--a nude who, like the other women in the paintings, looks dead rather than asleep--is her twin sister, Jane, who disappeared from her New Orleans home more than a year ago. Jordan becomes involved in the case with the FBI and is even used to lure the killer putting her life in danger.

Steig Larsson Novels

I've become a Stieg Larsson fan in the past few months. I had read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last year and while I enjoyed it, the Swedish politics and economic details were a bit hard to slog through.

However, I liked it enough that when The Girl who Played with Fire came out in paperback I picked it up. I have to say, it was my favorite of the three books (yes, I'm giving it away - I've read the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest). Played with Fire has the quickest pace and the best plot and you learn answers to many of the questions about Lisbeth Salander you had from the first book.

Ending with a cliff hanger seemed so unfair, but it ensured that I was ready to buy the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest as soon as it came out - in hardcover - at the end of May.

Like the first novel, the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest contains a lot of details on Swedish politics and the legal system, yet it's easier to get through as you are pulled along to find out the fate of Salander and Blomkvist.

What makes the novels even more interesting is the after life of Larsson who died before they were published and without a will. Now the only question that remains is, will a fourth novel ever be published.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Larsson-t.html?scp=1&sq=stieg%20larsson&st=cse

The Man in the Wooden Hat and Old Filth

I've been remiss in recapping my most recent reads. I wish I could say it was because I was reading too much, but really it's because I've had too much going on.

We read The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam for our May book club. I accidentally read Old Filth first, which features the same characters but is told from the perspective of the husband of the octogenarian couple. The Man in the Wooden Hat is told from the wife's perspective.

They were both well-written interesting books recapping the long marriage of Edward and Betty Feathers. They spent much of their lives in Hong Kong, returning to England for retirement. Neither Edward nor Betty are characters you feel deeply about, they are too reserved for that.

I was reminded of Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea while reading Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat. It had been a long time since I had read Murdoch's work, so I'm not sure if it was the elderly couple or the style I was reminded of.

In the end, I preferred The Man with the Wooden Hat over Old Filth probably because it was told from Betty's perspective which I was able to relate to a little more fully.

The Three Weissmans of Westport

I had read a good review of The Three Weissmans of Westport by Cathleen Schine and then it was recommended in a couple of other places, so I was excited to read it. I've read ~70 pages and I hate it. I can't even bring myself to finish the rest of the novel.

The three Weissmans of the title are an octogenarian mother and her two middle-aged daughters. They are whiny, self-centered and annoying.

I decided to take Nancy Pearl's advice and give myself permission to not finish the book. She says you should read at least 50 pages if you are under 50. Moving on to May's book club book "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam.

Half the Sky

I read Nicholas Kristof's columns in the New York Times every week, so when I heard he had published a new book with his wife (Sherry Wudunn), I knew I had to read it.

Half the Sky is about the struggles of women around the world, but unlike so many other books, it offers solutions. Ways to get involved. Things to do. And the authors realize that even though we can't all quit our jobs and work for the Peace Corps (as much as I'd like to!), that we can each have an impact in our own way.

Ever since I heard about the cutting of girls genitals in a college religion class, I have followed the efforts to curb this practice. It's interesting to read how it has gotten some attention, but not nearly enough. Kristof and Wudunn also write about sex trafficking, maternal mortality and other gender based violence. But they use individual stories of women who often have survived the crimes committed against them to bring the point home.

The only negative reaction that I had was a question that kept popping up in my head "where are the men in this? Do they not have a responsibility?" And I get that if you educate a woman, you help an entire village, but there was some acknowledgement I didn't get from the book. However, when I checked their website (to confirm the spelling of Sherry's last name) I noticed they have a headline "Women aren't the problem. They are the solution. Along with me." Maybe I wasn't the only one.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson finally came out in paperback and I bought it and quickly consumed it. The second novel in a series of three, was much better than the first one. It moved quickly, was much more suspenseful and intriguing.

You quickly find yourself siding and routing for Lisbeth Salander, even though all evidence suggests that she has murdered two innocent people and one not-so-innocent man. It ends with a cliff-hanger and the hardcover comes out in the US at the end of next month. How tempted am I to pre-order it from Amazon? VERY.

Weekends at Bellevue

I had heard Julie Holland on NPR and was interested enough in what she had to say, so picked up Weekends at Bellevue at the library. There were parts of the book that were interesting, particularly the stories about the clients, but the details about her personal life and the scheduling and personality issues at the hospital were boring.

I guess she was a better doctor than writer.

The Help

I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett for our April book club and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Often times, books that are hot best sellers and get lots of buzz from book clubs, popular media, etc don't live up to my expectations.

But The Help was a character rich, plot driven and entertaining read. I felt like I got to know these women and I felt like so many of the themes weren't necessarily limited to the South or the 1960s. The Junior League women ostracizing Skeeter when she doesn't agree with their racist points of view is familiar to any woman who has had a close group of girlfriends and then experiences a life change and finds those friends treating her as an outsider. Skeeter's mom wanting to shield her daughter from the fact that she is seriously ill and hell bent on beating itis another universal theme.

When we discussed this book at book club, one woman who had grown up in Louisiana and who's mother and grandmother had always had help took such offense to this book and the fact that it was riddled with stereotypes. It led to an interesting discussion, but never having any experience with domestic help I just couldn't relate. And no matter what job someone is doing, I have always tried to treat them with respect. Side thought: isn't that a tenant of Christianity? And isn't the South filled with lots of Christians?

In short, the book was a great read and good for lots of thought-provoking discussion.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I wish, wish, wish I had loved it. Junot Diaz is one of those writers I have followed and have found his short work interesting. I had such high hopes for his first novel, but I just didn't love it. I didn't even really like it. I read it, I finished. Done. Such a sad post.

Little Bee

I've had Little Bee by Chris Cleave on my "to read" list for a while - I think it was recommended from someone at Malaprop's (a fabulous bookstore in Asheville). It finally came out in paperback a few weeks ago and I read it in just a few days.

Little Bee, a teenager from a small Nigerian village, comes to Britain to find the couple she met on the beach when she was running from the men who had burned her village. Instead, she arrives on the day of the husband's funeral and continues a series of events that were set in motion on that beach.

Cleave rotates narrators between Little Bee and Sarah which brings more dimension to the story. In the end I was left wondering if we do enough as human beings to help others and where our need for self-preservation is outweighed by the need to help someone in more danger.

The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is one of those books that I looked at but never picked up. I'm glad I finally did for our March book club.

Set as a fable about a shepherd boy who believes he needs to travel to Egypt to find his personal legend in the pyramids it is really about bigger life lessons. That life is meant to be lived and that often what we have searched for has been right there with us all along.

I read the book and thought 'oh that was a lovely sentiment' and then thought I'd forget all about it, but my sub-conscious had other ideas. That night I had this beautiful dream about attending a wedding on an island that was somewhat dangerous. As we were focused focused on staying safe and doing what the staff were telling us, I looked up through a foggy morning and saw the most beautiful cliff side village. I turned to the person standing next to me and said, "thank you for making me come here. I would never have seen this if you weren't getting married here."

Who it was and where I was, I have no idea, but there was a feeling of overwhelming awe and at the same time a sense of being right where I belonged in the world and very much alive.

I wish I could find that feeling of awe and rightness in my everyday, waking life.

Passing Strange

As most of you know or have at least guessed by now, I am typically a fiction reader. I read non-fiction rarely and if I do it's usually memoirs, but after hearing a segment on NPR, I eagerly picked up Passing Strange by Martha Sandweiss.

Passing Strange tells the story of Clarence King who was a successful geologist at the end of the 19th century but who eventually began to pass as a black man and married Ada Copeland, a black woman. Clarence took on the name James Todd and the profession of a Pullman porter (who were only black men) when he married Ada. Clarence/James never told any of his friends or close confidants of his marriage and subsequent marriage. Everyone assumed Clarence was a lifelong bachelor.

Sandweiss does a good job of retelling Clarence King's story - his success as a geologist, his travels West, his financial troubles and surmising how he managed to live a double life. Ada Copeland Todd was harder to construct. Most likely a child born into slavery, there is no historical record of her until her early 20s. Once she married Clarence King, there is evidence of her children and various homes.

Sandweiss weaves the two stories together effectively and it's clear that she is a dedicated researcher. Like with most non-fiction, I was left wanting to know more about the why and what they felt, but without historical evidence, there is no way to know how Clarence and Ada lived when they were together.

Divisadero

Michael Ondaatje is a genius. The English Patient and Anil's Ghost left me giddy to read his latest novel, Divisadero.

The story begins at a farm in Santa Rosa, CA with three children - Claire and Anna, raised as sisters and motherless and Coop, a boy who was left an orphan after a tragedy on his neighboring farm. The three of them grow up together and yet in one moment the lives they know become ripped apart through love and violence.

We follow Coop through a future of gambling and drifting. We find Anna in France writing about the life of a French poet whose story mirrors the truth of her own.

Ondaatje is a master of prose. I wanted to climb into his words like a hammock in order to be enveloped by their beauty. Lines like "lightning lit up the river like a path through history and she grabbed the boy to stop him from leaping into its brief beauty" and "the three of them, she had always believed, made up a three-panelled Japanese screen, each one self-sufficient, but revealing different qualities or tones when placed beside the others" affirm Ondaatje's magic with words.

Yet, the story left me wanting something more. Some more resolution with Coop, Claire and Anna. I am left with the story of Lucien through which I am supposed to read more deeply into to find the essence of Anna, Coop and Claire's story.

Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls was our February book club selection. Now that we've had our meeting, I can post my review :)

I liked it. It was a quick read and interesting. It was one of those stories I found myself thinking of after it was finished. It is characterized as a "true-life novel" though I think of it more of a fictionalized memoir.

Walls writes the story of his grandmother, Lily, and her childhood growing up in the frontier west. She is a driven, tough as nails woman. Her story was compelling, yet there was something missing. I wanted a little more emotion, a little more feeling. Even though she had to be strong, there was still room for exploring some deeper thoughts, especially since Walls chose to write it in first person narrative and make it fiction.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice and Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

January was mystery month. It felt like all I wanted to read were mysteries, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I picked up the first of the Laurie Kings Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes book and think I'm hooked. The Beekeeper's Apprentice introduces us to Mary Russell, an orphaned teenager living with her Aunt and how she comes to meet a retired Sherlock Holmes. The pair end up great friends and eventual partners in solving crimes. Now I'm curious to learn how their relationship develops.

I also read the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by C. Alan Bradley and recommended by Nancy Pearl (of Booklust fame). This was the first mystery adventure for pre-teen Flavia du Luce, a British Nancy Drew who makes lots of missteps making her sweet and endearing.

Gate at the Stairs

I had heard so much about Lorrie Moore when her first novel in 15 years came out last year. She has a devoted following and the reviews of Gate at the Stairs were good, so I requested it from the library.

I read it over the long weekend and while it was good, I think I just didn't get it. The main character, Tassie, is a college student who gets a job as a nanny/sitter for an eccentric couple thinking of adopting a child. Tassie goes with Sarah Thornbird-Brink, the potential adoptive mom, to meet a few of the birth mothers. And so begins the story of Tassie and the Brinks. All the characters feel self-involved and never concerned with more than what other people think.

The whole story came across as very sterile and more cerebral than emotional. There's so much about this book that could be emotional - a mixed race adoptive child, a cheating husband, a brother going off to join the Army - that I finished feeling like something was missing.

Much of the novel was beautifully written and there were witty, intellectual sections. I will try to read some of Lorrie Moore's short stories to see if I am missing something.

The Hour I First Believed

I have read Wally Lamb's previous two novels as well as the short-story collections he edited by the women in his writing workshop at the York Correction Facility, but I was reluctant to read The Hour I First Believed, mostly because it was marketed as dealing with the aftermath of Columbine.

I am reluctant to read stories dealing with recent tragedies (I still haven't read any that deal with 9/11 unless it's extremely cursory mentions), but after a recommendation from a friend (thanks Beth!) I decided to give it a try and am glad I did.

The novel is set in Littleton, CO as well as the fictional Three Rivers, CT and centers around Caelum Quirk and his third life, Maureen. Caelum and Maureen both worked at Columbine but only Maureen was at the school the day pf the shootings and was severely traumatized by what experienced. As Maureen struggles with PTSD and Caelum flounders to help her, they decide to leave CO and return to the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers, CT.

Once you get past the Columbine incident, there is almost a sense of relief to have the tragedy dealt with, but Lamb has much more in store for Caelum and Maureen. The story is told primarily from Caelum's perspective and because of that there are times you loathe him, times you want to smack some sense in him, but in the end I grew to love him. I cried when the book ended. It felt as if I was on the quest to be a better man and make sense of what happened throughout his life with him.

Lamb is a master storyteller and I hope we don't have to wait another seven or eight years for another book.