Review: What Alice Forgot

Thirty-nine year old Alice falls and bumps her head in the health club. When she comes to, she’s lost the last ten years of her life. She doesn’t remember her three children, that she’s separated from her husband Nick or that her relationship with her sister is strained. When she looks in the mirror, she hardly recognizes the woman reflected back. She’s obsessed with working out and in the middle of a bitter divorce.

As Alice stumbles through her days discovering who she’s become, she starts to question her life. Things that were so important become less so.

This book features wonderfully quirky characters. I loved the character of Tom, her son, in particular. The passages with him just made me laugh and smile.

All in all this book is a delightful read. It makes you think about the little decisions along the way can change the direction of your life. I highly recommend it.

Review: Maine

Maine, by J. Courtney Sullivan, is the perfect summer read. But don’t be fooled by the cover of the book, this is not your typical light beach read. It’s about family, secrets, relationships and the complications that occur in every day life.

The story of three generations of women from one Irish-Catholic family, the Kellehers, Maine weaves together events from the past and present to illustrate how the characters came to be. We meet Alice, the matriarch; who is struggling against a profound sense of guilt over the death of her sister. Kathleen, the oldest daughter, is divorced and a recovering alcoholic who fled to California where she owns a successful worm farm with her hippy boyfriend. Her family doesn’t understand her and is embarrassed by her chosen profession.  Ann Marie, the daughter-in-law, has the perfect life. She lives in a huge house, belongs to the right clubs, and her husband is very successful. But she can’t escape that fact that she was born on the wrong side of town, one of her perfect children is a mess and she is attracted to her neighbor. Maggie, the granddaughter, lives in New York City. Her boyfriend is a bit of a loser and and she’s about to have a huge change in her life.

During the course of one summer events occur which bring the four generations of women to live together. Secrets are revealed. There is so much which could be said about this book. The character of Ann Marie alone could keep me busy for days.

As someone from a dysfunctional Irish-Catholic family I found it easy to relate to the story. While my grandmother passed away when I was young, we still have tales of people who were put “in the book” and never spoken about again. What I liked about this book is that it reminds us that while our family can be highly flawed, they are family. We must accept them for who they are. And sometimes, they might just surprise us.

If you are looking for a good summer read, I’d recommend Maine.

4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday: The Violets of March

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

I have DevourerofBooks to thank for this one.Tonight on twitter she gushing about this book. Based on the description I’m just going to go ahead and preorder this one because it looks like a gem.

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio is out on April 26th.

A heartbroken woman stumbled upon a diary and steps into the life of its anonymous author.

In her twenties, Emily Wilson was on top of the world: she had a bestselling novel, a husband plucked from the pages of GQ, and a one-way ticket to happily ever after.

Ten years later, the tide has turned on Emily’s good fortune. So when her great-aunt Bee invites her to spend the month of March on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, Emily accepts, longing to be healed by the sea. Researching her next book, Emily discovers a red velvet diary, dated 1943, whose contents reveal startling connections to her own life.

A mesmerizing debut with an idyllic setting and intriguing dual story line, The Violets of March announces Sarah Jio as a writer to watch.

Teaser Tuesdays: A Moveable Feast

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

From Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, The Restored Edition, page 163.

“Forget what Zelda said,” I told him. “Zelda is crazy. There’s nothing wrong with you. Just have the confidence and do what the girl wants. Zelda just wants to destroy you.”

I swear I honestly just came to this part in the book! I didn’t go looking for a part including Fitzgerald and certainly not this section of the book.

I am LOVING this book and really wish that someone had encouraged me to read it before now. I had no idea that Hemingway could write like this.

Review: The Weird Sisters

I cannot begin to tell you how much I adored Eleanor Brown’s book, The Weird Sisters.

The centers around the Andreas Sisters: Rose (Rosalind), Bean (Bianca), and Cody (Cordelia) named by their  father, a professor of Shakespeare, who communicates almost exclusively in verse. Their mother is an absent minded house wife. Books and reading played an enormous part in their lives.

All three find themselves back in their home town of Barnwell, Ohio at a crossroads. On the surface they claim to be home to help care for their mother as she battles breast cancer. But each of the sisters is battling their own struggle. Rose appears to be the successful sister. She is a Math Professor but she was just told that her position was being eliminated and her fiance Jonathan, also an academic, just earned a fellowship at Oxford. Jonathan wants Rose to move to England but Rose worries what that would mean. Who would take care of her family? Where would her next job come?

Bean was fired from her job in New York for stealing. She may appear to be glamorous but her life is anything but. Up to her eyes in debt, she flees New York for home. Feeling trapped in the small town and struggling to find herself, she begins an affair with a married man. Cordy, the baby, has traveled the United States for the last several years living in less than desirable places taking odd jobs just to get by. When she discovers she is pregnant she realizes that she needs to do something and moves home.

Over the next few months, we learn more about the sisters through flashbacks. We see how they took on their specific roles in the family. We see them struggle against their role. And finally we get a glimpse of how things are going to be in the future.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the narration. It was one of the things that I enjoyed most. The sisters (plural) serve as the narrator. It sounds strange, but it really works. It’s almost like you are getting insight into their world at the same time you are sitting back and watching everything unfold.

I highly recommend this book. I look forward to reading more from Eleanor Brown.

5/5

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading This Week?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading This Week? This is a weekly event to list the books completed last week, the books currently being reading, and the books to be finish this week. It is hosted by Sheila from One Person’s Journey Through a World of  Books so stop by and join in!

I finally feel like I accomplished something. Last week I finished Melanie Rose’s Finding Home and Julie James is A Lot Like Love (review to come). Julie’s book was fabulous!

I almost finished Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters. I think part of me is enjoying the book too much that I hesitated in finishing it off yesterday. But alas, all good things must come to an end and I will finish this book today.

Review: Finding Home

Melanie Rose’s novel, Finding Home, centers around a woman, “Kate”, who gets in a car accident during a New England blizzard. She is rescued and finds herself in the house of Vincent James unable to remember who she is or where she was going. Vincent’s daughter, Jadie, takes an instant liking to her and breaks her two year silence by talking to Kate. Jadie, who has cystic fibrosis, tells Kate that Amber, her dead sister, told her that Kate was coming. Jadie’s nanny, Tara, takes an instant dislike to Kate. Kate plays with Jadie treating her like any other child while Tara is so concern with her health that she treats her like a rare collectible doll.

Tara’s brother Colin is a therapist and attempts to hypnotize Kate in effort to discover her true identity. Instead Kate begins to recount the life of “Kitty” a woman who lived in the area over 100 years ago. Though Kate’s sessions with Colin the reader is treated to tales of what it was like to live in New England in the early 1900s.

There are other rich characters including a neighbor, Maria, a single mother trying to raise her teenage son after her doctor husband left them. Maria is convinced that ghosts occupy her home. There’s also another neighbor, Adam, who lives with his elderly grandparents taking care of them and their farm. Vincent’s mother also makes an appearance. As the story progresses we find out what exactly happened to Vincent’s wife two years ago when she “left” and what exactly happened to Kitty all those years ago.

I began reading this book on my flight back from Florida last week and I have to say it made for the perfect reading. I was able to get lost in the story. Though the book is over 400 pages, it is a fast read.  I had read half the book by the time I landed at O’Hare. There are several twists and turns. Just when you think you have the story figured out, Rose tosses another curve ball.

If I had one complaint it was that I felt Kate’s great love affair happened so quickly and I didn’t quick see what exactly drew them together.  Was it their past lives?

This book might have not been very realistic, but it was a good read and helped me to escape the drudgery of air travel.

4/5 stars

Review: The Paris Wife

When I came across a post mentioning Paula McLain’s book, The Paris Wife, I instantly added it to my wish list. I’m not a fan of Hemingway – I actually hate his writing – but I love the time period and the setting, Paris in the 1920s. I had also recently read Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank and this book seemed to be in a similar vein.

The Paris Wife is the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage as told through his wife Hadley’s perspective. When Hadley Richardson meets Ernest she is a 28 year old spinster living in her sister’s home. She visits a friend in Chicago shortly after her mother, who she cared for, dies from an illness.  She meets 20 year old Ernest Hemingway at a party. Ernest has just returned from the war and is suffering from what we now know as PTSD. He is working as a journalist but dreams of something bigger. They have an instant connection. When Hadley returns home they continue their courtship through letters. Shortly later Hadley returns to Chicago and they are married.

They move to Paris when Ernest decides to make of go of writing as a career. McLain describes in detail the process by which Ernest became Hemingway. His writing process and struggles to succeed are recounted through Hadley’s eyes. At the same time Hadley describes her struggle to determine what it means to be a wife and later a mother without losing her identity. She loves Ernest and wants him to succeed but as success begins to come she fears the changes she begins to see.

Many of the darlings of the literary world make an appearance including the Fitzgeralds, Stein, Pound, Dos Pasos, MacLeish and the golden couple Gerald and Sara Murphy. The behavior by some (open marriages, mistresses, children born to women other than their wives) seemed somewhat shocking. It was the Jazz Age and boozing around was expected but I was surprised by some of the details involving affairs. It was also fascinating to see Hadley struggle to fit in with their new circle of friends. Because Hadley always appeared to be an outsider it made her the perfect person to recount all the details as an outside observer.

As their marriage begins to fall apart I couldn’t help but feel for Hadley and her son, Bumby. She had given so much to Ernest when he struggled and she wasn’t able to enjoy the success that came to him. But ultimately, it appears that success didn’t bring Hemingway happiness as he went on to marry three more times and ultimately commit suicide. Hadley however found solace with her second husband.

I LOVED this book. I didn’t want it to end. I savored reading each page. I felt transported to the 1920s and I could picture Paris and see what drew Hadley to Ernest. McLain is an incredible writer and clearly did a lot of research to compile this book. There are many little details like music, books, drinks, etc that are woven in.

I would highly recommend reading this book.

5/5

Disclaimer: I received my copy from Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program. Though I would have gladly paid full price for this book as it’s one that I imagine I will reread many times in the future.

Review: Friday Mornings at Nine

I really wanted to love Marilyn Brant’s Friday Morning’s at Nine. I liked the concept of a group of friends getting together weekly for coffee discussing their lives.  I even liked the premise of “What if we married the wrong man?” and “What if we are living the wrong life?”. But this book just fell flat to me.

Each Friday morning, Jennifer, Bridget and Tamara meet at the Indigo Moon Cafe in suburban Chicago for coffee and to catch up on each other’s lives. They all appear to be in some sort of a rut, and one day Jennifer posses the “what if” question. This leads each of the women exploring a different road. Jennifer reconnects with a former love from College, Bridget flirts with a colleague from work and Tamara gets to know her younger neighbor down the block. The explorations lead to dramatically different outcomes.

This book didn’t really work for me. I didn’t feel a connection between the characters. I couldn’t quite understand why they continued to meet each Friday because they didn’t appear to be all that close of friends. I also found myself having a hard time keeping track of the difference between Jennifer and Bridget’s families. The plots involving their children were a bit of a distraction. They seemed to be dropped in and the story quickly moved on from them.

I’m not sure if its because I’ve never been married, but I found myself having a hard understanding why Tamara stayed married to Jon. He treated her horribly in the beginning of the book. He warmed up a bit, but I find it hard to believe that two people could be married for nearly 20 years and live like that. I also found the character of Aaron to be a bit too perfect.

I felt like this book was a bunch of pieces to a puzzle they were thrown together but didn’t quite fit. This book wasn’t terrible, it was a pleasant enough read but it isn’t something that I could envision myself reading again.

I heard good things about the author’s first book, According to Jane, so I think I’ll give her another try.

3/5 stars.

Disclosure: I received the book as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program.

Review: Room

It probably wasn’t the best idea to read Emma Donaghue’s book, Room in December. The book is certainly not festive and  doesn’t involve happy topics.  But I had read good reviews about the book and several people on twitter were talking about the book so I thought I would use one of my audible credits to download the book.

A woman, Ma, is kidnapped when she is 19 and held captive in an 11 x 11 room. The book is told from the point of view of her son, 5 year old Jack. Jack seems like the typical 5 year old boy.  He likes to play, read books, draw and watch tv. But Jack has never known the outside world. His entire life is lived in one tiny room he shares with his Mom.

I listened to the audio version of this book and I have to say that the narrator portraying Jack , Michal Friedman, was outstanding. There were times when I forgot that I wasn’t listening to a child. It made the book seem to come more alive. I also think that listening to the book made it easier to get through it. Not that the book was awful… quite the opposite the book was very good. It was the subject matter that was difficult.

I could go on more about the book, but that would require spoiling some of the details. I would highly recommend this book.