The Rice Mother by Rani Manica drew my attention because it is written by a Malaysian woman and the story is set in Malaysia. This alone is a rare treat and not something we often get to read. The novel tracks 4 generations of a Tamil family from Ceylon living in Malaysia, starting with Lakshmi, the indomitable rice mother herself. She is married off under false pretenses at only 14 to a much older man and sent to live with…
For a first novel, Old Border Road by Susan Froderberg is quite brilliant. It is set during a long drought in the Arizona desert and there are two main characters here, Katherine, (referred to only as Girl or Darling or Daughter) and the landscape itself. Katherine marries Son when she is only 17 and they live together in the old adobe house with his parents on Old Border Road. She soon finds she is spending most of her time with her…
I am a big fan of Anne Rice, especially the Vampire Chronicles, so I was looking forward to the latest from her. Of Love and Evil is the second novel in her Seraphim Series (somehow I missed the first one.) This slim little novel is what I would call Anne Rice-lite. This is the story of Toby, a hired assasin who has changed his ways, and with the help of the angel Malchiah he is given the chance to do good…
I really liked the first half of the novel My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares. I love the premise of retaining one’s memory from life to life as you are reincarnated in a different body each time. It reminded me of ‘Interview with a Vampire,’ or ‘Highlander.’ Even though those characters are immortal, Daniel, the main character in this novel shares many characteristics with them. Such as learning many languages through the centuries, playing many instruments, stockpiling wealth, knowing science, history,…
My bookclub finally got me to read Freedom by Jonathon Franzen, and that is what I’ve been slogging through for the past week. I never would haven chosen to read this book on my own, despite all the hype. Almost 600 pages later I feel that I wasted a good many hours of my life reading it. Tedious is the word that keeps coming to mind. Is this the great American novel? I really really hope not. I found it…
The Book of Tomorrow is Cecilia Ahern‘s new novel. She is a very prolific writer. After the less than wonderful novel The Gift, this book is a welcome change. Just enough magic and interesting charcters to keep me up late at night turning the pages to see what was going to happen next. Young, rich and spoiled Tamara Goodwin has to leave her home after her father dies, to go live with her bereaved mother and her mother’s relatives in a small country town…
But Not For Long by Michelle Wildgen is about a smaill group of people living in a co-op in Madison, Wisconson, and what happens to them over the course of three days during a blackout. This seemed more like a short story than a novel to me. Introducing several characters, showing us a small slice of their lives, and ending after a particularly traumatic incident happens, leaving us all hanging on and wanting to know more, or perhaps care more…
Lovingkindness is a powerful little novel by Anne Roiphe. I had never heard of Roiphe until I found this book for a dollar at our local used book store. I picked it up because it looked really interesting-and it is! This is the story of Annie, a feminist Mom who became a young widow and raised her daughter Andrea with all of her own feminist values. Annie, however, gets very lost, and roams the world trying out drugs and men and looking for…