The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thomson Walker was a book that scared me a little to read. It is about the slowing of the earth which makes days and nights longer with no scientific explanation. Birds die, whales beach themselves by the thousands and yet for 11 year old Julia, life as a burgeoning teenager continues on in all it's painful reality.

Friends disappear as their families flee the cities, some people choose not to join the mandated clock time and become outsiders. Julia loses her best friend, watches as her parents marriage unravels and her mother suffers from the "syndrome" and tracks her crush, Seth Moreno, from afar.

The book is well written and while anxiety-provoking, it is also thought-provoking and touching as a story about ordinary life in in-ordinary times.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

When I started reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, I kept wondering - is this fiction or non-fiction. Apparently it is categorized as "narrative non-fiction" which for me meant a true story that was entirely readable.

Boo takes us inside the world of the Annawadi slum in Mumbai. In the shadow of capitalism represented by the airport and adjoining hotels, Annawadi is a world all of its own - with rules and expectations and stories to fill a book (or more). And while the world around them deals with what seem to be bigger problems, the residents of the slum do their best to survive day to day while looking for opportunity. But sometimes those opportunities run counter to a neighbor's plans and when they intersect the results can be desperate and deadly.

Boo does a magnificent job of opening up this world to us outsiders while being empathetic and kind to the people who inhabit Annawadi.

Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac

The overview of The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino sounded promising. Comparing it to the work of Nick Hornby and Tom Perrota, it was called funny and about a "loopy but loving family" and the main character, Calvin Moretti, an oddball antihero.

All I found was a dysfunctional guy who doesn't want to grow up, wants to smoke pot and hang out with his loser friends and doesn't really care about anyone else.

At one point, I thought "I just want to finish this book so I can stop this guy's whining." Enough said!

I only finished it because it is for a book club in Philadelphia.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs is a wonderful story of wanting to belongand the power of connection.

Jacob Copeland's grandfather always told fantastical stories and Jacob as a child always believed them. As he grew older, however, his belief in these stories diminished and eventually he hardly believed them at all, chalking them up to stories his grandfather told to gloss over the harsh realities of his childhood.

When his grandfather dies Jacob, at 16, is brokenhearted and lost. Terrible dreams and his grandfather's last words haunt him. His parents send him to a therapist, but nothing seems to help. Eventually he convinces his parents to let him visit the island where his grandfather was sent to escape the Nazis.

Once there Jacob enters the fantastical world of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children and his life will never be the same.

The ending of the book clearly opens the door for the next chapter, which according to Amazon will be out in 2013. I will be eager to see what happens to Jacob and his peculiar friends from Miss Peregrine's.

A Land More Kind Than Home

A Land More Kind Than Home is the July selection for my (former) Charlotte book club. I am still trying to read what they read because they have really good selections and after starting (and stopping) a few bad books recently, I was thrilled when I started A Land More Kind Than Home.

From the opening chapter, Wiley Cash had me hooked. Set in a small town in North Carolina (which I could easily imagine from my days running through the hills of Western NC during relays), A Land More Kind Than Home tells the story of Jess Hall who witnesses something bad happen to his mute brother, Stump, inside the makeshift church his mother attends.

Jess is older and wiser than his 10 years, but his story is still supplemented by two other narrators, Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife who used to attend the church but years ago starting keeping the children during church services, and Clem Barefield, the local sheriff. Like all small towns there is a deep history and connection between the residents which impacts how everyone reacts to the incident with Stump.

Carson Chambliss the Pentecostal preacher is a scary soul, so the story carries with it some fear of what he will do next to his parishoners or those who cross him.

A Land More Kind Than Home is a eloquent, exciting first novel.

The Cat's Table

Michael Ondaatje has always been a writer I have admired and enjoyed, so I was eager to read The Cat's Table when it was published. After I finished, my admiration of Ondaatje was reconfirmed.

A story of adventure as a young boy travels to England from Colombo on a ship in the 1950s, it is told with wonder. Along with two older boys, Cassius and Ramahdin the boys meet amazing characters and learn more about the world on this ship than ever before.

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog

I was a little put off by the title of this book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Tales from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing, and what I assumed would be a depressing recounting of horrific experiences of children by the psychiatrist who worked with them. I was happily surprised by what was a mostly positive take on these children and their ability to heal.

Perry recounts stories of the children he has worked with in his long career and how much he has learned about children and the impact trauma and neglect have on their development. Woven between those stories, Perry neatly explains brain development, mental health diagnoses and impacts of trauma on the brain which I had learned in my first year of Graduate School.

In the end, I was touched by how hard Perry and his team worked with each of these children and the patience and understanding they exhibited. Most of the stories have a happy, positive ending which helped make the overall book feel positive and in the conclusion, Perry makes some recommendations about the changes we need to make as a society to help minimize the impacts of trauma on our children.

I Thought It Was Just Me (But it isn't)

My friend Brie introduced me to Brene Brown and her research on shame and vulnerability through her two TED talks. After watching both of them numerous times, I decided that she was my new personal hero. What Brene had to say was so smart, so well-researched and she was so open about her own vulnerability and shame, how could you not be inspired?

I ordered her book I Thought It Was Just Me but saved it for summer break before starting it and then I savored it. Not because the language is beautiful or the topic is so wonderful, but because itmakes so much sense. It needs to be read slowly (and probably more than once) to really be absorbed.

The idea that shame makes us feel disconnected and isolated and how we can become aware and hopefully stop that shame, felt like genius as I read it. I thought of dozens of friends and acquaintances that should read it, but afterwards, I decided that every woman should read it. It might give us pause the next time we start to feel shame or if we see someone else struggling or someone pulling us into gossip, we can change direction.

Brene's work feels tangible and actionable and I hope someday that I will be able to use some of the techniques in my own practice.

The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry is an interesting novel set in Salem, MA. Towner Whitney is the center of the story as she returns to her home town after 15 years in California when her step-grandmother goes missing. She has always been close to Eva and only something so extreme would bring her back to the home and memories she has been running from for years.

The story is complex with characters (an eccentric mother, an aunt who is crippled from years of physical abuse), history (the Salem witches, lace readers and other fortune tellers) and sides stories, but like the Ipswich lace, Barry weaves it together into a very readable story.

Some parts of the story feel a little forced, like Towner's romance with a local detective, John Rafferty, but overall it is a light, enjoyable read.

Silver Sparrow

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones begins with the statement "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist" and we are taken into the world of Dana Lynn and her mother Gwendolyn (James' "second" family) and Chaurisse Witherspoon and her mother, Laverne (James' legitimate family).

Dana and Gwen know about James' other family and Dana spends her life wondering what it is like to be his legitimate daughter, Chaurisse. Eventually, the lives of these two girls cross which is inevitable as they are the same age and both live in Atlanta.

It is hard not to be mad at James who continues this charade for years, but I was more disappointed by his "brother" and best friend, Randolph. He seems to be in love with Gwen and cares for both girls, but continues to aid his brother's deception.

It was easy to get pulled along in this story and worry for the girls who were innocent victims of the actions of their father. But there were little mistakes that took away from the work and made me question the veracity of other information.

Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the story of friendship, love and loss and we feel all of it as Caldwell takes us along in this well written memoir.

We know early on that Caldwell loses her best friend, Catherine Knapp, to cancer, but first we must learn about the tenor of their friendship to understand what comes at the end - the loss of a most important friendship, the person who just "got" her.

Two introverted writers, Caldwell and Knapp met and built a friendship because of their dogs. Taking long walks lead to deep conversations and mutual reliance. Throughout the first half of the book, Caldwell sets out to explain how they became friends, what that meant and how their similarities, including both of their struggles with alcoholism, bonded them together.

In the middle I found myself a little bored with Caldwell's recount of her struggles with alcoholism. Knapp had written about hers in Drinking: A Love Story, so I thought that maybe Caldwell felt the need to share her own experience. But later, I realized it was to show how deeply these two women were able to understand and accept each other.

By the end of the book, as Caroline is diagnosed with cancer, begins treatment and a willful battle, I was in tears. Caldwell reminds us all what a precious gift friendship is and how terrible it is to imagine (and read about someone else) losing it.

Sister: A Novel

As you've gathered by now, I have a penchant for good mysteries and heard a lot recently about a new author, Rosamund Lupton, and her book Sister: A Novel.

I picked it up on my way to Charlotte for a week off and started it right before I drove back to PA, which was terrible timing! It was such a good book, I had to resist pulling into every rest area to read a chapter.

The story is told through a long narrative from Bee to her sister, Tess, who is missing and then is found dead. The police rule it a suicide, but Bee is convinced that the sister she knew so well would never kill herself. She relentlessly pursues leads and the truth and the reader is taken on a roller coaster as Bee considers and dismisses various suspects.

What was so compelling for me about Sister, is that Lupton combines the art of a great mystery with a story about the misunderstandings and unconditional love among sisters.

Buddha in the Attic

Forgive me for gushing, but it's been a while since I've read such a wonderful book, that I won't be able to help myself. Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka was different than I expected. It is a small book, but is jam packed with beauty.

It is a meditation on the experience of a group of Japanese brides coming to America in the early 1900s. We follow them on their journey and then through various successes and disappointments of life up to the internment camps of WWII. It is told with such honesty and yet such delicacy for these women who lived and loved and lost so much. 

Otsuka shows the passage of time with the changing of seasons in a way that is beautiful and makes you forget the individual suffering of these women for a moment.

Overall, this small book is one I would highly recommend.

Close Your Eyes

Amanda Eyre Ward's books are the kind of stories that I can read in a few days. They pull you along and don't let you put them down. Close Your Eyes was no different.

After her mother is murdered in their home and their father goes to jail, Lauren grows up unable to trust in love and relationships. Meanwhile her brother, Alex, believes in his father's innocence and will not give up proving he did not kill their mother.

As Lauren suffers from panic attacks, she is pulled into the story of her mother's death and eventually we uncover the truth.

The Sense of an Ending and The Last Brother

The last two books I read felt similar and yet very different, so I decided to give them one post.

Since Julian Barnes' book The Sense of an Ending won the Man Booker prize in 2011, it has been on my to read list and I got a chance to read it over Christmas break. Barnes is a master storyteller, carrying us through the years to bring understanding and meaning to the death of a friend. Tony Webster is a man in his 60s who has lived a full life since boarding school including a career, family, divorce. Now retirement, Tony receives a small gift that makes him revisit those years during and after boarding school and the loss of a friend.

While you read looking for an answer, it is the relationships between the characters and the desire to have life make sense that is the real gift of this small novel. By the end of the story, you don't really get the ending tied up in a nice bow, but you do get a sense of an ending.

The second book is The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah which is also a small yet jam packed novel. Set on Mauritius in 1944 it is the story of love and loss. Nine year old Raj tells of life on this island, isolated from the reality of WWII but full of its own troubles. After losing his two brothers, Raj, his mother and his abusive father relocate to another part of the island and it is there that Raj meets a blond haired boy, David. David is a Jewish refugee being held in the prison where Raj's father works.

Language and culture are transcended as Raj and David bond and become brothers. A beautifully told story that will stay with you long after you put it down. I highly recommend this book.

Too Much Happiness

I have admired Alice Munro's writing for a while, so I was eager to read her latest collection of stories Too Much Happiness.

The first few stories were wonderful I particularly found Dimensions, Wenlock Edge and Free Radicals some of the best of Munro's stories. Each started out ordinary but then took a twist I wasn't expecting.

However, when I got to Woods and Too Much Happiness, the two last stories in the collection, I wasn't as impressed. I was especially surprised by Too Much Happiness since it is the title story. It was just a little unclear and jumped around too much - and I think there was a typo of the name in two places in my edition which just distracted and confused me.

I would still recommend this collection, and her others.

Man in the Woods

I read A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer many years ago and still remember loving it, so when I came across one of his newer books, Man in the Woods, at the library, I picked it up.

Man in the Woods tells the story of Paul who is driven to an act of violence which he keeps secret from everyone in his life but it eats away at him. His relationship with a successful writer, Kate, and her daughter, Ruby, is put at risk as he becomes obsessed with the crime and the conflicting fear of being found out and of having to live with the secret forever.

As Paul's life unravels, you feel sympathy toward him, more so than for the victim who was not innocent nor a very good person. You fear for what will become of him and the impact all of this is having on Paul, Kate and Ruby.

However, there were some parts that read a little unrealistic or convoluted, where the characters just don't feel real or have realistic reactions to emotions or experiences.

Never Knowing

Chevy Stevens is a new mystery writer who is often recommended to me based on my reading and browsing history on Amazon and other sites, so I was excited to find Never Knowing at the local library.

Stevens is a great mystery writer and I have found her story staying with me for weeks after I completed the novel. I didn't pay too much attention to the plot recap when I picked up the book, so I was a little thrown when I started reading and found that the story is about an adopted woman who searches for her biological mother and then figures out that her father was a serial killer and rapist.

The story is told through a series of therapy sessions in which the adopted woman, Sara, recounts what is happening as she learns the truth and her biological father reaches out to her and she develops a relationship with him in order to help capture and stop him. Riveting and frightening, it was like watching a great episode of Law & Order SVU or Criminal Minds.

I have Stevens' other book, Still Missing on my shelf, but it is written in the same format of therapy sessions, so I feel I need a little more time before picking up a book with such a similar format.