Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

336 pages

Published November 2013 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Publisher’s Summary: 

Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act, and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks don’t forget…

Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William’s life, his fortunes begin to turn—and the terrible and unforeseen consequences of his past indiscretion take root. In a desperate bid to save the only precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner. Together, they found a decidedly macabre business.

And Bellman & Black is born.

My Thoughts: 

This one has been sitting in my virtual TBR pile since before it was published. For some reason, it just never managed to rise up to the top of the pile. But, since I had gotten it originally through NetGalley and never written a review, I decided it was time to remedy that. 

This was my third book by Setterfield (I previously read The Thirteenth Tale and Once Upon a River. Going back over my reviews of those two books, I find that I feel very much the same about this one as I did those two. There are parts that are very intriguing and drew me in; but, overall, I felt that it was uneven. In this one, I also felt that I never quite "got" what Setterfield was trying to tell me. Why would a man, who as a young boy had done something that so many young boys do, be punished for the rest of his life for it? Why does the source of his misery also allow him to become so very successful in his career? Why does it kill off the people his was with that fateful morning - why do they deserve to die to punish him? And why spread their deaths out so far as to appear as though they were not related at all? And why take so long to punish him at all? Why wait until he is a grown man, happily married, with a family he adores and a career he excels at? 

Far more questions than answers for me. I'm not opposed to having a book raise questions that stick with me after finishing the book. But this doesn't strike me as the type of book that's aiming to do that, nor the types of questions that an author would typically raise to cause a reader to think more deeply. 

So I'm sorry to say that this isn't a book I'd recommend, although I did enjoy much of the writing and a great deal of the story. 

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

256 pages

Published February 2026 by Random House 

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

No one knows you like your book club.

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.

But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.

My Thoughts: 

I'm pretty sure I say this every time I read one of Quinlen's books, but it's true that she's one of my go-to authors. I haven't always loved one of her books; but they always given me plenty to think about and depth and there is always so much truth to them. This one falls into the category of not being one of Quindlen's books I loved, but also a book that I would recommend because there is so much to think about (and talk about, making it a good book club choice). 

While there is a lot going on in this one (infertility, mental health, friendship, death grief, dementia, family dynamics, and family secrets), there also isn't much of a plot, It's absolutely centered on its characters.  Some things feel a bit forced and some characters are a bit stereotyped (could Mark be any more perfect?). But most of those characters? I really liked them, even the ones that had sharper edges and the relationships between them. There's a gentleness to this story that I really enjoyed and an easy flow that pulled me along. 

Despite what I perceived as its flaws, this is a book I can easily recommend for those who enjoy character-driven novels and novels about relationships and what makes a family. 

Life: It Goes On - March 1

Well, hey there! Happy Sunday! I definitely did not intend to go radio silent for two weeks, but I'm so frustrated with my inability to figure out how to get photos uploaded the way I want them that I'm disinclined to sit down to the blog at all. And then suddenly this morning, I tried something different and it seems to have worked! 

I knocked out a ton of cleaning yesterday so I'm hoping to have time today to get some reviews written - I'm so far behind! Lately, though, I'm trying to allow myself to work on whatever suits my fancy in any given day - so it may just be reorganizing the kitchen or working on genealogy. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Kevin Wilson's Run For The Hills, which I'm really enjoying. 

Watched: A friend and I went to watch a one-woman play called All Things Equal: The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It was funny and touching and we would both highly commend it.

Read: I'm currently reading Karen Schatz's Where The Girls Were. Next up is probably Melanie Benjamin's latest, The Windsor Affair. 

Made: Pork roast and smashed potatoes and pasta with bolognese sauce. Otherwise, we somehow ended up eating out a lot this week. 

Enjoyed: It was 70 degrees and sunny here on Friday afternoon so the Big Guy and I joined friends for happy hour on a local brew pub's patio. It was lovely and just the thing I need to make it through the rest of winter. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's going to be a paperwork kind of week this week, as I'm still working on closing up my dad's estate. It's also time to get back to Go Simplified's decluttering plan for the year - February got away from me so I'm going to be trying to get through both February's and March's assignments this month. 

Thinking About: I keep thinking I need to take a break from the news for my own sanity, but then something new comes up and I don't want to be uninformed. Working on trying to find a balance so my brain doesn't burn out. 

Feeling: Wistful. Today is Miss H's and Ms. S's birthday and I'm missing the days when that meant celebrating with them, making a cake and watching them open their gifts. 

Looking forward to: A friend and I are going to hear Anna Quindlen speak on Tuesday. 

Question of the week: Are any of you planning on being The Bride? The cast is terrific, but it's not the kind of movie I usually see in the theater. I'm on the fence about it. Any other movies you'd recommend? 

Truth and Beauty: a friendship by Ann Patchett

Read by Ann Patchett

8 hours 6 minutes

Published 2004 by HarperCollins

Publisher’s Summary: 

What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when that person is not your lover, but your best friend? In her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett shines light on the little-explored world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about the first half of her life. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans 20 years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

My Thoughts: 

As you’re well aware, I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s fiction writing and I loved her essay collection This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage. But I might like her even better as a human being. Not that I actually know her, but I do watch her every posts every week. Did you know that when Nashville was hit with the ice storm last week, Patchett paid for the hotel bills of every employee who had to leave their home due to lack of power and paid employees even if they couldn’t get into the store. The store remained open every day as a place people could come to warm up. That’s a good human. 

She was also an incredible friend to Lucy Grealy, a woman who, in my opinion, often made it difficult. Lucy could be very self-centered and was terrible roommate. She took out loans she had no intention of ever paying back, wouldn’t do any work that wasn’t writing, fretted incessantly about never finding love or not getting the grants or positions she wanted. To be fair, Lucy’s life was tough – she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma which led to the removal of part of her jawbone; in an effort to repair the damage caused by that and chemotherapy, Lucy underwent dozens of surgeries. She suffered from the cruelty of children while in school and adults when she was older. 

Patchett and Grealy were only slightly familiar with each other when they became roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but Patchett had admired Grealy in college. Grealy had that “it” factor that seemed to draw people to her and Patchett was no exception. As roommate the two agreed that Patchett would do all of the cooking and cleaning while Grealy would leave plates of food on the floor and borrow Patchett’s clothes without asking. But Lucy was fun and Patchett needed someone to pull her off of her straight and narrow path and into the fun. Lucy loved Ann and it’s hard not to love someone back who loves you so much they jump into your arms regularly. 

Over the next nearly two decades the two stayed incredibly close and Patchett traveled regularly to spend time with Grealy. But Grealy began to check in less and less often as her depression deepened and then her addition to oxycontin and heroin consumed her. Patchett began more and more to have to mother Grealy, to be the voice of reason. In those final years, loving her became more and more difficult. Still, two years after losing Lucy, when this book was published, Patchett was clearly still grieving and feeling that Grealy was worth the hard times. 

This is an incredible story of love and friendship, written beautifully. Read by Patchett, it becomes all the more heartfelt and heartbreaking. 

Life: It Goes On - February 8

Happy Sunday! It's warm, it's sunny, and my back is finally starting to feel like I can function again. A week of being crippled by pain meant there was a lot of work to catch up on this weekend. I managed to vacuum, sweep, make beds; I did draw the line at moving a giant cabinet which I know I'll regret because I don't know when I'll get the Big Guy talked into doing it again. 

As you can see, I finally figured out a work around for inserting pictures. It's not as quick or easy as what I'm used to doing. But it works and, hopefully, ends several weeks of frustration. I think the frustration has greatly contributed to my lack of posting because I knew that I was just going to get upset about the system not working any time I sat down. We'll see. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding has been on my TBR for more than a decade and on my bookshelf for almost that long. I finally decided to see if I could find it on audio so I've been listening to it this week. I'm about five hours in and the jury is still out on this one, but I'll probably stick with it. 

Watched: F-1, starring Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem, college basketball, lots of Olympic coverage already, and tonight we'll be watching the Super Bowl, although we don't have a dog in the fight. 

Read: I finally started Diane Setterfield's Bellman and Black in print and I'm also reading A.D. Bell's The Bookbinder's Secret digitally. 

Made: Because I'm forever being tempted by recipes I find on social media, today I made a recipe called Frito Fruckies to munch while watching the game tonight. They still need to set up so I can't say yet if they'll be a repeat. 

Enjoyed: Dinner out last night with BG. It's the first time I've felt remotely like getting out of the house (other than for work) in over a week and it felt good. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's a week of paperwork and decluttering for me. 

Thinking About: How my watch tracks me. I never sleep with it on and yet it's telling me that I had a bad night's sleep last night. Did I? I felt like I slept great. Does my watch, that's not even on my body, know more than my brain does?!

Feeling: See above. I'm in much less pain and more productive so I'm feeling much better mentally. 

Looking forward to: Do I know what's on my calendar for this week? No, no I do not. I have been terrible of late in tracking what's on the calendar and what needs to be done. 

Question of the week: Will you be watching the Super Bowl? If so, who are you cheering for?