A Long Time Gone
Synopsis:
When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi
Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her
family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she’d left,
that’s exactly what happens—Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken
marriage and her lost dreams for children.
What she hopes to
find is solace with "Bootsie," her dear grandmother who raised her, a
Walker woman with a knack for making everything all right. But instead
she finds that her grandmother has died and that her estranged mother is
drifting further away from her memories. Now Vivien is forced into the
unexpected role of caretaker, challenging her personal quest to find the
girl she herself once was.
But for Vivien things change in
ways she cannot imagine when a violent storm reveals the remains of a
long-dead woman buried near the Walker home, not far from the cypress
swamp that is soon to give up its ghosts. Vivien knows there is now only
one way to rediscover herself—by uncovering the secrets of her family
and breaking the cycle of loss that has haunted her them for
generations.
My Review:
Five
stars is not enough. This book is SO GOOD and so well-written. The
story of "chasing ghosts" from the past to find answers about ourselves.
A testament to why we need to know our past, our history in order to
understand where we are going or what our place in life is all about.
This story spans from 1920s to modern day and 4 generations of Walker
women (Adelaide, Bootsie, Carolyn and Vivien) lost to their purpose and
place in life all because of the events that took place in 1927 at the
Walker home in Indian Mound, MS. It takes a divorce and the loss of a
pregnancy in 2013 for Vivie to go back home to MS to find herself. This
story is so full of twists and turns - tragic, mysterious, full of
secrets but full of love and nurturing. It is too easy to giveaway the
story if I give more of the storyline and I feel that it would truly
ruin the reading experience; and it was an experience - delightful,
engaging and satisfying. I will definitely be reading more books by
Karen White. EXCELLENT!!!!!
The Vacationers
Synopsis:
For the Posts, a
two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended
family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their
thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has
graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and
beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the
tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according
to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and
new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and
ancient wounds are exacerbated.
This is a story of the sides of
ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the
ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the
bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous
heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the
midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
My Review:
I
really enjoyed this book. It was the perfect summer read. The post
family is at the crossroads of a major life-change. Sylvia Post, their
18 year old daughter just finished high-school and is off to college in
the Fall. Jim Post, the father, just retired from a job he loved and
which he had held since he was 25 years old. Bobby Post, is the 26
year-old son who seems to live a dream life in Miami as a real-estate
investor with his much older girlfriend - Carmen, a Cuban-American
personal fitness instructor. Franny Post, is Jim's wife and Bobby and
Sylvia's mother. She's a 50-something wife and food writer for whom
middle-age has unexpectedly sneaked-up on and threatened her comfortable
Manhattan life. In an effort to bring some normalcy to the
soon-to-change and quickly crumbling life of the Posts they embark on a
2-week family vacation in Palma, Mallorca. There, they find they have to
deal with all of the disappointments, mistakes, bad decisions, unwise
choices they have each made that has brought chaos to the otherwise
seemingly-perfect Post family. In Mallorca, they are joined by Franny's
best friend Charles and his husband Lawrence. Charles and Lawrence are
coping with natural insecurities of any wedded couple on top of the fact
that all of their friends have already adopted babies and they have
been trying unsuccessfully for several years. The toll of the desire to
be parents and the disappointment of not being selected for a baby yet
is weighing heavy but their relationship is the healthiest of everyone
in the group.
The book was enjoyable because I felt like a fly on
the wall in the life of the Posts. Knowing all of their secrets before
everyone was aware. Each character is neurotic in their own way but
surprisingly normal. Kind of like when you think your own life is
neurotic but soon you find that your friends and even strangers that
seem otherwise "normal" are just as neurotic as you. Not to mention the
beautiful descriptions of Mallorca and the amazing foods they eat while
they are there. There are many funny parts in the book and the dialogue
is witty. It reminded me of that same wit that Maria Semple delivers in
Where'd You Go Bernadette (one of my favorite books by the way). I was
surprised to see that this book had ratings in the low 3.3's as I
definitely found it to be entertaining and a truly satisfying read.
Perhaps because sometimes we like to see that others who seem to lead
perfect lives are just as crazy as you. It makes what we used to refer
to as dysfunctional a much more functional kind of life that you don't
have to feel has to be seen by others as "perfectly and enviably"
normal.
The Summer Guest
Synopsis:
On an evening in late
summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his
life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He
comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of fishing in a place that
has brought him solace for thirty years, and an astonishing bequest that
will forever change the lives of those around him.
From the
battlefields of Italy to the turbulence of the Vietnam era, to the
private battles of love and family, The Summer Guest reveals the full
history of this final pilgrimage and its meaning for four people: Jordan
Patterson, the haunted young man who will guide Harry on his last
voyage out; the camp’s owner Joe Crosby, a Vietnam draft evader who has
spent a lifetime “trying to learn what it means to be brave”; Joe’s
wife, Lucy, the woman Harry has loved for three decades; and Joe and
Lucy’s daughter Kate—the spirited young woman who holds the key to the
last unopened door to the past.
As their stories unfold, secrets
are revealed, courage is tested, and the bonds of love are strengthened.
And always center stage is the place itself—a magical, forgotten corner
of New England where the longings of the human heart are mirrored in
the wild beauty of the landscape.
My Review:
This is one of the best books I have EVER read. Cronin's writing is
simply beautiful. There is so much in this book that it is a bit
challenging to condense everything into this short review. This is the
story of life and how life and death is a different journey for everyone
because of our individual circumstances: tragedy (war), loss (death of a
loved one), love (of a child, of a parent of people for how they impact
our lives), sacrifice (the unconventional and practical decisions we
make for the benefit of others), and death (everyone's different journey
through the same path). Harry Wainwright is a self-made millionaire
whose life links him to Joe and Lucy (owners of a fishing camp in
Maine), Kate (Joe and Lucy's daughter), Jordan (the guide at the camp),
Joe's father, Hal (Harry's son), Meredith (Harry's wife)and others who
at some point are directly and indirectly linked to Harry throughout his
life. Harry is dying of lung cancer after a full life. However, before
dying, Harry wants to connect all of the loose ends that tie all of the
characters together. He returns to the fish camp in coastal Maine where
he has visited regularly for the last 30 years. This place has become
over his lifetime the place where he is not Harry Wainwright the
millionaire but Harry, the kind friend and summer guest who is as much
part of the camp as all of the residents.
I find myself lately reading a
lot about the journey of life and death. I recently lost my mother and
have been plagued with many questions about death and the why and how
people undertake that journey. Always the same inevitable outcome but
the journey unique to each. Justin Cronin takes us through what goes on in this dying man's mind - his thoughts, his wishes and regrets. Even
through the confusion of a heavily medicated (morphine) last weeks,
Harry manages to relive his entire life through the beautifully written
pages. At the end, I felt like I was a witness to not only Harry's life
but Joe, Lucy, Kate and Jordan. When Harry dies, I felt all of the same
emotions I experienced when my own mom and dad passed away. The
confusion of why and the anti-climactic moment when a person you have
known to have been so alive and present in your life takes that last
breath. Although it sounds like this book would be sad to read, it
really wasn't. Somehow, it made me feel better to know Harry's
experience in comparison to my own parents. What I took from this
amazing book is so obvious and yet so eye-opening to me. The fact that
death is inevitable but how you choose to live the life between your
birth and right before your death is what it is all about.
I will
definitely be reading Mary and O'Neil (also by Justin Cronin) which I have read many reviews
about and seems equally as impacting.
The Snow Child
Synopsis:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal
place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and
Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight
of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a
moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child
out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a
young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl,
who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts
with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow
survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to
understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy
tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this
beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they
eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
My Review:
Beautiful
and haunting. I loved this book. One review described it as "a brutally
realistic fairy tale," and I couldn't agree more. This book was more
than just a fairy tale though. I think I will find myself thinking about
the many topics in this book that provoke questions about love,
mortality, parenthood, sacrifice and just the mysteries of life in
general. Definitely on the top of my favorite reads list!!
What We Keep
Do you ever really know
your mother, your daughter, the people in your family? In this rich and
rewarding new novel a reunion between two sisters and
their mother reveals how the secrets and complexities of the past have
shaped the lives of the women in a family.
Ginny Young is on a
plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for
thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and
her sister, Sharla, were young girls. At that time, a series of dramatic
events--beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual
next-door neighbor--divided the family, separating the sisters from
their mother. Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once
was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices
that occur in almost any woman's life, and learns surprising truths
about the people she thought she knew best.
My Review:
I enjoyed this book very
much. It wasn't "GREAT" however. It dragged a bit at the beginning but
well worth for the ending. I would rate it closer to 3.5 stars only
because I think that the mother's character could have been further
explored. I really felt for the mom. I felt that she was greatly
misunderstood and judged much too harshly. This book is about daughters,
sisters, mothers and friends and how complex those relationships can
be. What one person perceives in any combination of those relationships
is more often than not not the same thing the others also see.
Relationships are so much about how we interpret people's actions and
behaviors. The whole time, I thought about how when I was a kid, I saw
my own mother as solely a mom - not as a woman, a person, a human being
with her own thoughts, regrets, feelings, emotions. It was not until I
became a mom myself that I realized that she wasn't perfect and above
all that she was human. She made mistakes and have her very own
feelings, desires in life and opinions that did not necessarily coincide
with mine and that is okay. I feel that in my mom's last few years (as
she recently passed away)I tried to view her as a person first and she
appreciated that. I didn't judge her actions (well, I tried not to) as
to what I expected her (as a mother to me) to do or say. It made me
understand her better and really appreciate her more. It's tough to stay
on a pedestal, specially the one we hold our parents on for most of our
lives. I think it even makes us better parents when we accept that our
own parents made mistakes. My mom, as the Ginny's and Marla's mom in the
book, loved her daughters. She just didn't love her life and she needed
to find herself and her place in life in order to be happy or it would
have consumed her and made her bitter. What I did love, very much as a
matter of fact, about Elizabeth Berg's book was that at the end you see
life does not come in a nicely tied package with a big ribbon on it. It
isn't so much a present that always brings us joy but it is a journey
that is unique to every person and people's choices (wrong or right) are
part of that journey.
Goodnight June
Synopsis:
June Andersen is
professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by
unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby’s
estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children’s
bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s. Amidst the store’s papers, June
stumbles upon letters between her great-aunt and the late Margaret Wise
Brown—and steps into the pages of American literature.
My Review:
I loved this book. A
beautiful story about saving the magic of bookstores (and I don't mean
the Barnes and Noble of the world). You can tell that this book was
written from a very personal place for Ms. Jio. The book did not follow
the usual plot pattern of Jio's books and that was a pleasant surprise. I
love Jio's stories but was looking forward to her expanding her writing
to stories that develop differently. From the moment I picked up this
book I couldn't put it down. It is a story that will appeal to those who
love books and like me who admire the craft of writing stories and the
crafters, even those who dedicate their life and talents to the simple
children's stories that shape our love of books from the time we are
little. This was a feel-good story that I will treasure.
Sarah's Key
Synopsis:
Paris, July 1942:
Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the
French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her
younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that
she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel'
d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an
article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary
investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets
that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the
girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps,
and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her
own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
My Review:
A horrible chapter in France's history during the second World War. The
round-up of Jews (some even French born) in a neighborhood of Paris by their
very own French police (under the influence of the German Nazi regime)
and then sent to Poland to their deaths. One girl, Sarah, is brave and
manages to escape. She had helped her little brother hide in the
cupboard in their apartment in Paris when the round up began, both
unknowing of what was going on and thinking she would come right back to
get him. Her escape from the camp is prompted when she realizes that
her little brother will die if she doesn't go back. She holds the key
that unlocks the cupboard. She manages to make it to Paris to find that
her brother is dead. In 2002, an American journalist living in France
works diligently on a story about the round-up when she realizes that
Sarah's story takes place in the very apartment her husband's family has
occupied since the very round-up that turned Sarah's life upside down.
In her research she finds many facts that bind her to Sarah and her
fateful story. The book is sad but there is hope in the journalist's
findings. And, these findings which changed Sarah's life so many years
ago also change hers.
I loved this book. Another example of fabulous historical fiction.
