Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo is a follow up to his earlier novel Breakfast with Buddha. Fifty-one year old Otto Ringling had lost his wife, his job and his way. He takes time out to visit his sister and enlightened brother in law, Volya Rinpoche and embarks on another road trip across the Western United States in search of…he’s not exactly sure. It’s impossible not to be drawn into Rinpoche’s simple wisdom, humor and gentle nature. A wonderful story…
The Photographer’s Wife by Suzanne Joinson is a novel set in 1920’s Jerusalem and 1937 England. The protagonist is not actually the photographer’s wife, but rather 11 year old Prue, daughter of an English architect living in Jerusalem. Seventeen years later, she is an artist living by the English seaside with her young son, when memories of her childhood in Jerusalem come back to haunt her. A beautifully written book, almost like a dream, yet lacking in depth and character…
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy is a novel about a big American family with thirteen kids from Detroit and the house they all grew up in. They are grown now, and the oldest brother Cha-Cha is seeing a psychiatrist because he believes he has been seeing a ghost, or a haint, as they are called down South where his parents are from. The house is empty now and in what’s become a bad neighborhood in the city. Most of…
Untwine is the new novel by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat. Set in Miami, it is the story of two identical twin sisters, born holding hands. Sixteen years later, one wakes up in a hospital room unable to speak or move and tries to piece together the tragedy that just befell her family. A beautifully written novel; a heartbreaking story about loss and finding yourself again. However, I kept hoping something else was going to happen in the story, and when…
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman is historic fiction set at the time of the fall of Jerusalem (70 C.E.) to the Romans, specifically the Jewish stronghold of Masada where over 900 Jews committed mass suicide rather than be taken as slaves by the Romans. Hoffman tells the story through the voices of four different women who came to Masada and became the dovekeepers there. The language is mesmerizing; she beautifully weaves their stories, their lives, their voices together as if…
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, is such a well plotted, suspenseful novel, with so many twists and turns, I kept having to go back to see what I had missed. Set in 1860’s London, amongst a group of petty thieves, known as fingersmiths, a plot is hatched to make them all rich, or is it? Waters is a master of her craft. Hers is a dark world to enter into, but even so, almost impossible to put down. Paying Guests remains…
If you like time travel, historic fiction or romance novels, you will love Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsly. Set on the coast of Scotland in present day and 300 years ago during a Jacobite uprising, a writer rents a small cabin only to discover she is reliving her ancestors memories and her life beings to parallel that of the past. Kearsly has beautifully crafted the story. A great book to escape into, I was transported to Scotland past and present…
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Cruise is a slightly entertaining, mostly silly book about ghosts haunting a castle where two orphans are left alone living with the housekeeper. A woman gets sent down there to take care of them by her ex-husband, craziness and seances ensue, the ex’s get back together, adopt the kids and all live happily ever after. Now you can skip the book, its not worth reading.
The Portable Veblen, by Elizabeth McKenzie, is a brand new novel that’s been labeled quirky, original, highly entertaining. All these things and more are true, it’s fresh, and unexpected, and I loved the pictures. Veblen is a thirty something woman working as an office temp, translating Norwegian, with a passion for studying the economist Thorstein Veblen, her namesake. She also talks to squirrels. Her fiance is a neurologist working on an invention that could make him rich fast and allow…
I just read Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, which was republished 40 years after it originally came out. Apparently a big sensation in 1973, Isadora Wing, the protagonist travels all through Europe having sex with many different men, fantasizing about even more men, while freely and openly exploring her sexuality and talking about it. I found her to be whiny, spoiled and totally annoying. Is this the picture of a feminist? She can’t imagine spending one second without a…