A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson is a wild roller coaster of a ride through the deep South. We follow three generations of Slocumb women aged 45, 30, and 15 in small town Mississippi as they try to uncover the truth about the bones found underneath the old willow tree in the backyard. Jackson writes like no other, and this novel kept me up half the night trying to unravel all the plot twists and turns to figure out what was really…
Dreaming in Chinese, Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love and Language by Deborah Fallows is a book about Fallow’s attempt to learn Mandarin while living in China for three years with her husband. Fallows has a PhD in linguistics, and this small, deceptively simple book is full of penetrating insights into Chinese culture, thinking, body language, and much more. A captivating look into the heart of the Chinese people. Fallows writes with understanding, humor and honesty. This is a wonderful little…
Songs Without Words by Ann Packer is a beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking novel. It tells the story of the lifelong friendship between Liz and Sarabeth, two women now in their 40’s living in the Bay Area. Sarabeth’s mother committed suicide when Sarabeth was only 16. She then moved in with Liz’s family, and their bond as sisters was forever formed. Now decades later, Liz has a teenage daughter of her own in crisis, and Liz and Sarabeth’s friendship is put to the test. Packer…
I Never Fancied Him Anyway by Claudia Carroll is a lighthearted, funny novel about a 28 year old psychic named Cassandra who has her own magazine column and eventually TV show in Dublin, helping mostly single women looking for their perfect mate. Cassandra is likable, but the novel is pretty silly. If you’re in the mood for some chick-lit light it might just hit the spot. Supposedly it’s being made into a movie. Maybe it will be more entertaining on the big…
I tend to avoid novels set during WWII, as there have just been way too many of them. However, I picked up The Postmistress by Sarah Blake at my local library and found it quite interesting. Iris James, the postmistress of the novel’s title, tells us in no uncertain terms that there is no such thing as a postmistress, it is simply postmaster for a man or a woman, so I do have to question the title of the novel. Set in a…
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant is historical fiction set in Medici Florence at the time of the fanatical monk Savonarola in the late fifteenth century. It is a time when art flourished and Botticelli’s Venus was born. Our story follows the life of fifteen year old Alessandra Cecchi, a young artist and daughter of a cloth merchant. Although her character is fictional, she could have been real, and the events and people all around her are taken from history….
I have read and enjoyed several of Sue Miller’s novels. The Good Mother is her first novel. It tells the story of Anna Dulap. A recently divorced mother of a 3 year old little girl. After the divorce, Anna finds a new lover that she loses herself in. This keeps her from always having the best judgement. I tried to sympathize with Anna, but I found it hard to understand some of the choices that she made. I actually found the novel mildly…
Gretel Ehrlich has spent countless hours in solitude in the observation of nature and how we fit into the big picture. Her observations cut so deep and are so heartwrenching, sometimes I just need to stop reading and let her words sink in. Islands, The Universe, Home is a book of 10 essays that take us through the seasons on her Wyoming ranch and on pilgrimage to Japan and other places. At times I am reminded of Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, Matsuo Basho,…
Middle Son by Deborah Iida is a small, deeply moving novel about the middle son of a Japanese immigrant family, growing up in the worker’s camps in the cane fields on Maui. The novel brings us to the place so completely I can almost feel the cane spiders crawling on my skin and see the cane fires burning. Iida has crafted a tale of family tradition, love and obligation; also the need to distance oneself from their place of origin,…
The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook kept me up all night reading. It is set in New Mexico, past and present, and weaves together four generations of women. Meg, who is now 37 has taken her grandmother back to her childhood home in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where long buried secrets are uncovered. There, she finally reads her great grandmother Hanna’s journals, that she has avoided reading all her life.The journals give us a wonderful portait of New Mexcio at…