How It All Began by Penelope Lively is a novel of chance meetings and experiences that create more chance meetings and experiences that alter the courses of many lives like a domino effect. This is all based on chaos theory, or more specifically, the butterfly effect. The idea that the flapping of a single butterfly’s wing in the Amazon produces a tiny change in the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done,…
I really enjoyed Janice Lee’s debut novel The Piano Teacher until the end. It tells the story of Claire, a young piano teacher from England who has just moved to Hong Kong with her husband in 1953. The Other part of the story is told from voices of expats living there ten years earlier, through the war years. One in particular, Will Truesdale, ties the story together. In 1942 he is in love with a beautiful Eurasian socialite, Trudy Liang….
I’ve read several of Jeanette Winterson’s novels, and was excited when her new memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, came out. I don’t usually buy books in harcover, but I did this time, and I wasn’t disappointed. Winterson’s memior is brilliant. She was born in Manchester, England in 1959 and adopted at 6 weeks old. She never new who her birth mother was, and always believed she was dead. Her adopted mother was a depressed, religious fanatic…
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is a powerful and disturbing novel. Set in the South at the end of the 18th century, a seven year old Irish girl, Lavinia is orphaned during the sea crossing to America. She is taken in by the Captain and given to his slaves in the kitchen house to raise her and serve their family. Boundaries get confused as she grows into the white woman she becomes and can no longer live with the black…
Cecelia Ahern writes lighthearted, feel-good novels full of just a little bit of magic. If You Could See Me Now is no different. Ahern lives in Ireland, and this novel, as her previous novels, is set in the charming Irish countryside. P.S. I Love You (one of her earlier novels) was made into a movie starring Hilary Swank, and If You Could See Me Now is soon to be a movie as well. It tells the story of six year old Luke…
The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan, certainly has a catchy title, which seems to be what drew so many people to this rather tiresome book. It is narrated by Marilyn Monroe’s highly intelligent, and well read little dog Maf. A gift to her from Frank Sinatra, Maf went everywhere with Marilyn in the last two years of her life. The book is more a commentary of the times, than a biography of …
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…