The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Read by Carlotta Brentan, Cynthis Farrell, Mozhan Marno, Jonathan Davis, David Pittu, James Fouhey

10 hours, 55 minutes

Published September 2019 by Knopf

Publisher’s Summary: 

At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world--using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and under Sally's tutelage quickly learns how to blend in, make drops, and invisibly ferry classified documents.

The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story--the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara--with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. From Pasternak's country estate outside Moscow to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, D.C. to Paris and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a watershed moment in the history of literature--told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail. And at the center of this unforgettable debut is the powerful belief that a piece of art can change the world.

My Thoughts: 

This is one of those books that's been on my TBR for a few years. When I was looking for books for my book club to read in 2026 and saw that this one had been one of Reese Witherspoon's choices, I thought it was finally a good time to read it. 

First: the audiobook is definitely the way to go with this one. I really enjoyed having all of the different readers. 

Second: this is a good choice for a book club selection. There is so much to discuss - the history (both the history of Doctor Zhivago and the history of the U.S.'s choice to use it as propaganda, the way women were treated during that time, the multiple romantic stories some of which were scandalous at the time). 

I thought there were too many things going on in the book, another member felt like this could have been two separate books, others thought all of the different things worked well together. The very first thing someone said at our meeting when I said "let's talk about the book" was "and how bad the women had it then!" 

Third: I wish that the women had been the main focus of the book and that Prescott had found another way to get readers the background of Doctor Zhivago, without creating Olga's written history of her relationship with Boris and the book. 

In the end, I liked a lot about this book; I just wish it had been structured differently so that it didn't bounce so much between two story lines. 

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

336 pages

Published September 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group 

Publisher's Summary: 

“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

My Thoughts: 

"A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination and, at its adventurous heart, a wry and tender love-letter to the best of being human.” —Benedict Cumberbatch

I don't usually put much credence into quotes about books from other authors. Publishers tend to pick authors for quotes who are prone to like the book and writers are likely to want to praise a book, in no small part because they'd like the same done for them. But Benedict Cumberbatch? I doubt he's hoping for a great review of his next film from Haig. 

Still not the reason I picked up this one. I picked this one because my book club read Haig's The Midnight Library and we all really liked it. Why not read his next novel as a club as well? Now I'm honestly question that decision. While The Midnight Library absolutely had a fantasy element, it worked for me as a device between chapters. But in this one the fantasy element is front and center and it's supernatural. I'm not sure how that's going to go over with my book club. I know I struggled with it throughout the book. 

"Once upon a time there was an old woman who lived the most boring life in the universe. 

That woman rarely left her bungalow, except to see the doctor, help at the charity shop, or visit the cemetery. She didn't garden any more. The grass was overgrown, and the flowerbeds were full of weeds. She ordered her weekly shopping. She lived in the Midlands. Lincoln, Lincolnshire. The same orange-bricked market town that she had stayed in - apart from a stint t Hull University centuries ago - all her adult life. 

You know the place."

Grace is a lonely woman, living with grief over the long-ago loss of her son and more recently her husband when she receives the notice that a long-ago acquaintance has left her a home. Grace once did a kindness for Christina, something that seems insignificant to Grace but changed Christina's life. Grace arrives in Ibiza only to discover that what she's inherited is a small, run-down house set far off from the city and has been left a list of things to do in her time on the island. Almost immediately warned to avoid Alberto Rios; but Grace, wanting to know what happened to Christina, soon realizes that Alberto is the only one who can help her find out. So to check something off of her list and because Alberto tells her he will show her what happened to Christina, Grace goes scuba diving with Alberto late one night. What happens leave Grace able to read minds, to have a far reaching knowledge, and the ability to move objects.  Now she must decide what to do with those "gifts" and if she can truly know what happened to Christina and stop the people who were trying to hurt her. 

All of which sounds like a crazy adventure novel. Which it is...kind of. But it is far more about how Grace, who has been battling anhedonia for years and living with the guilt of her son's death, find pleasure in life again and learns to forgive herself. And that is very much the kind of book I enjoy. Strangely, one of the things I really enjoyed about this book was all of the references to mathematics (Grace had been a math teacher) - Haig really uses math to explain how the magical elements in this book just might not be that implausible, but also to explain life. I liked that - I may have to rethink my opinion about math...and maybe magical realism. 

The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George

The Little Village of Book Lovers

272 pages

Published July 2023 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In Nina George’s New York Times bestseller The Little Paris Bookshop, beloved literary apothecary Jean Perdu is inspired to create a floating bookstore after reading a seminal pseudonymous novel about a young woman with a remarkable gift. The Little Village of Book Lovers is that novel.

“Everyone knows me, but none can see me. I’m that thing you call love.”

In a little town in the south of France in the 1960s, a dazzling encounter with Love itself changes the life of infant orphan Marie-Jeanne forever.

As a girl, Marie-Jeanne realizes that she can see the marks Love has left on the people around her—tiny glowing lights on the faces and hands that shimmer more brightly when the one meant for them is near. Before long, Marie-Jeanne is playing matchmaker, bringing true loves together in her village.

As she grows up, Marie-Jeanne helps her foster father, Francis, begin a mobile library that travels throughout the many small mountain towns in the region of Nyons. She finds herself bringing soulmates together every place they go—and there are always books that play a pivotal role in that quest. However, the only person that Marie-Jeanne can’t seem to find a soulmate for is herself. She has no glow of her own, though she waits and waits for it to appear. Everyone must have a soulmate, surely—but will Marie-Jeanne be able to recognize hers when Love finally comes her way?

My Thoughts: 

Last fall my book club read Nina George's The Little Paris Bookshop and it was a big hit. So when I was putting together this year's reading list and found that this book is meant to be the book referenced in that book, Southern Lights, I thought it would be a great follow up that we would surely enjoy. 

We did not. In fact, one member said she hated this book. I have never heard her say that about any book we've read; she is generally the one we count on to find the humorous bits and the highlights of books. She began with the book in print and finished with the audiobook version, which I think may have been the problem. On Goodreads, I noticed that a lot of the people who didn't like this book had listened to it and found it confusing. I can definitely see that; a lot of people who read it in print found it confusing as well. There is a lot of back and forth in the narration and Love as a narrator and a talking (although not literally) olive tree are tough for a lot of people to buy into. 

To be fair, having not that long ago read The Little Paris Bookshop and having been told throughout that book that Southern Lights was the perfect book, George set readers up with very high expectations that were all but impossible to live up to. Further, in that book we were promised that this book would explore all kinds of love but when it came down to it, this one is all about romantic love between men and women. Very traditional love, even if told through a magical voice. Then, too, the title tells us that this is a book about book lovers, which would seem to be a different book entirely than a book about all kinds of love. Honestly, books only brought these people together tangentially - Francis' book mobile was more of a way to introduce us to a big cast of characters instead of a way for the characters to come together organically. 

I think my book club agreed that a book that was primarily about Marie-Jeanne's gift and her being able to help people find each other would have made a better book. Or a book strictly about how the book mobile makes true book lovers out of all kinds of people and how they learn about each other would have been a good read. It just didn't work for us to pull the two stories together. 

For most of us the ending of a book can make or break a book and this one might well have been saved by a different ending. We spent the entire book waiting for the sainted Marie-Jeanne to be rewarded for all of the good she did with love of her own. And we waited. And we waited. It was not until there were only five pages left that George gave us the slightest hint that Marie-Jeanne might finally find love. The lesson from that? Love is cruel. Which seems a strange way to come to the end of a book all about love. 

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl 

288 pages

Published April 2024 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head, and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean. Oysters, she thought. Where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a traumatic childhood has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. But when her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress—and embarks on an adventure.

Her first stop: the iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces Stella to a veritable who’s who of the Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, she begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.

My Thoughts: 

I've thoroughly enjoyed Ruth Reichl's nonfiction work and was really looking forward to seeing what she would do with a work of fiction. Of course, it's not a surprise that she would choose Paris for a setting, nor is it a surprise that food plays a major role. I chose this one for my book club to read and it was, by and large, a hit. In fact, I think everyone else liked it much more than I did. 

I had a lot of issues with it, to be honest. There's a scene, very early on, that should have come with a trigger warning. Given that she chose to include it, I expected it to play a much bigger role later in the book, but when I finished the book, I felt it could have, very easily, been left out entirely or at least have been minimized. 

Then there's the fact that once Stella, who has never had any real interest in food and prefers a plain meal, can suddenly discern all the flavors in a dish once she's introduced to food by a real Parisian. I know that some people are born with the ability to taste many more flavors than others of us can, but for her to be able to name them without ever having had them was a stretch. In fact, a lot of the book required a lot of suspension of disbelief. Like Stella having a boss that was ok with her extending her stay by months. 

Despite all of that, the writing about food was, as you would expect, divine and Reichl's love of fashion also comes front and center. As someone who studied fashion merchandising in college, I was familiar with the designers, the fabrics, the styles and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And, I will admit, I did come to long for Stella to find happiness and the family she had never really had (which, of course, we know she will, eventually, even when we can't figure out how she'll get there). 

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

320 pages

Published March 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be. 

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

My Thoughts: 

This book was our January book club selection, recommended by one of our members. It was also a Good Morning America book club selection and it appeared on a number of best of 2023 lists. I had really high hopes going into this one. I wish it would have lived up to them. Unfortunately, for me, it didn't. Which is not to say there wasn't something to like about it. 

What I Liked: 

• The ideas of it: middle-class girl marries into rich family and has to learn to navigate that environment, rich person begins to wake up to her privilege and wants to better herself, mom realizes that, while she loves her kids, being a stay-at-home mom isn't necessarily for her.
• There were a lot of themes addressed: family, privilege, racism, classism, infidelity, marriage, philanthropy and its warts. 
• The jabs at the truly rich, in so far as it went. 
• The characters, in so far as they were developed. One I really did like was Tilda. Why her? Because she didn't change - she never apologized for who she was and remained an elitist snob. Which makes her not so much a character I liked, but I appreciated the reality of her character. 

What Didn't Work For Me: 

• Those ideas I liked weren't as fully developed as I would have liked. I get that Jackson was trying to write a book that addressed some big issues but with a lighthearted approach. That approach often works for me (Lian Moriarty is terrific at it). Here I really wanted more depth. 
• All too often I wanted to slap almost all of the characters. Sasha married Chip in no small part because she wasn't too intensely in love with him; yet even before they are married, he hasn't stood up for her when it comes to his family. Why would she marry someone who picks his sisters over her? Why doesn't she stand up to him even after they are married and demand he choose her as his priority? Why doesn't he see that he never puts her first? Georgiana, who has an affair with a married man, who is truly oblivious to her privilege, even though she works in a non-profit to help those in need worldwide. Georgiana and Darley who make up their minds about Sasha early on and refuse to give her any grace, even knowing that she isn't from the world they've been raised in. They adore their brother, but think he's so clueless that he's marry a gold-digger? 
• There are plenty of jabs, as I said, at the rich. But then Jackson goes on about their clothes, their homes, their jewelry, their cars, their airplanes...all in a way that appeared to me to be meant to impress. Nothing is made, for example, of the fact that Brooklyn has been so gentrified that the people who used to live there have been chased out by astronomical prices. 
• I felt like the growth that we did see in the characters was too rapid. Georgiana suddenly wakes up one day and recognizes that she has well more money than she will ever need and decides to give it all away? (At the same time, she doesn't recognize that she's been looking down on her own sister-in-law for having come to the marriage with less.) 
• Georgiana becomes an addict (although it's never called that) and then she just suddenly isn't, without any work put into it. That's not how addiction works. 

Now, I do need to tell you that in addition to all of those glowing reviews from well-known writers and all of those spots on best book lists, everyone else in my book club liked this book a lot more than I did. And it does make a good book for discussion, so in that regard, I would recommend it. 

The Buddha In The Attic by Julie Otsuka

The Buddha In The Attic by Julie Otsuka

Published August 2011 by Knopf 

144 pages

Publisher's Summary: 

A novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" nearly a century ago. 

In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. 

Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.

My Thoughts: 

This is one of those books that's been on my radar for years, but like so many books, it just keep sliding down the list of books to read (because, you know, shiny new books). But when I made my book club read a 500 page book in February, I knew I needed to give them a short read in March and suddenly this one popped to the top of the list. The Buddha In The Attic has everything in a novel that I want when I pick books for my book club: diversity, uncomfortable themes (and history), and timely themes. 

The Buddha In The Attic has the added advantage of being written in an entirely unique way. Told from a first-person-plural point of view, there are no characters that readers will follow throughout the book. Repeatedly Otsuka refers to "we" or "our," allowing her to tell many stories at once, in a cadence that is nearly poetic and often hypnotizing. It would have been impossible, without needing 800 pages, to tell so many stories if each option of what these women lived through had been told by a specific individual woman. These women come to the United States as "picture brides" for Japanese men who were already here. Most had been deceived into accepting the marriage but most had very little choice, regardless. Many found good lives with good men, more had very hard lives, often with very hard men. Some ended up in brothels. 

"On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some o us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the oat we wore the same old kimonos we'd been wearing for years...Some of us came from the mountains, and had never before seen the sea, except for in pictures, and some of us were the daughters o fishermen who had been around the sea all our lives." 

The women adapted. Areas developed that were strictly for the Japanese. Many became housekeepers or worked in shops, or did laundry. They farmed. They had families. Their children sometimes died, sometimes turned from their Japanese heritage, often found themselves ostracized both the whites and the Japanese. 

Only in the final section do we get the point of view of a white woman, describing the town she lives in after the Japanese have gone. Some she says, are happy to see them gone, some sorry, others wondering if they should have done more. 

"We wonder if it wasn't somehow all our fault. Perhaps we should have petitioned the Mayer. The governor. The President himself. Please let them stay. Or simply knocked on their doors and offered to help. If only, we say to ourselves, we'd known." 

"People begin to demand answers. Did the Japanese go to the reception centers voluntarily, or under duress? What is their ultimate destination? Why were we not informed of their departure in advance? Who, if anyone, will intervene on their behalf? Are they innocent? Are they guilty? Are they even really gone? Because isn't it odd that no one we know actually saw them leave." 

But how quickly the Japanese are forgotten. They're places in society taken up by others; their names blurring, their faces even more so. It feels a bit jarring to end the novel with a chapter told from the white point of view but it works as a reminder of how easy it is for those of us with power and privilege to stand by in the face of injustice, to move on with our lives, to succumb to fear mongering. It's a reminder to readers that, while this novel is a work of historical fiction, it could just as easily have been written about current events. History does, indeed, repeat itself. 

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

First published in 1814

About 500 pages, depending on the edition

Summary: 

Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

My Thoughts: 

I picked this for my book club's classic book for 2024. To say that it was not a hit would be a massive understatement. This is a well-read group of ladies and I have thrown a lot of different things at them over the years, but the lesson here is that 500 pages of early 19th century sensibility, with a lot of dialogue but not a lot of action, doesn't work for these ladies. But this book doesn't work for a lot of people for exactly the same reasons my book club didn't enjoy it. 

Fanny Price is not the same kind of heroine that Austen's readers are more familiar with - she is quiet, physically weak, and lets people run all over her. In her defense, she was thrown into a situation at ten-years-old where it was made clear to her that she was inferior to her cousins, entirely dependent on her uncle's largesse, likely suffered from indoor allergies, and was treated as little more than a servant by so many in her family. Her one and only true ally was cousin Edmund, a young man who grew up knowing that he would become a member of the clergy; the two of them, probably rightly so, tended to the higher ground. We do at least see Edmund nearly fall prey to Mary Crawford and Fanny finally stand up for herself when she refuses Henry Crawford, despite the risk to herself. 

Austen isn't without social commentary in Mansfield Park. Because of the Bertram's holdings in Antigua, Austen does touch on slavery. We look at the huge imbalance of wealth and the cost to all involved. Fanny's family is so poor that they must send Fanny away to live elsewhere and her brother goes into the Navy at a very young age to earn his way while the Bertram girls grow up knowing that they will be required to marry well, regardless of warmth of affection or intelligence. Fanny's aunt Bertram is indolent while her Aunt Norris is forced to prove herself worthy of Sir Bertram's continuing support. 

For me, Mansfield Park was a reread, but I will admit that it's a slow read. The satire is not as striking and there is not as much outright humor as there is in others of Austen's books. And the ending is, in my opinion, not quite up to snuff. We have spent hundreds of pages being shown what was happening in Fanny's world only to be told what happens and how we should feel about it. We are meant to dislike Henry Crawford very much in the end (although his character may have grown the most throughout the book, thanks to Fanny) and meant to believe that Fanny and Edmund were always meant to be together. But Austen could easily have let Henry become the man Fanny seemed to believe her was becoming (a man who sees a better way, much like Darcy in Pride and Prejudice). But Austen, who was writing in the time of broad Gothic romance, seemed to have preferred to steer away from that. It would have made a more interesting ending. Although, let's be honest, we would not have gotten to see Maria Bertram Rushworth get the ending she deserved. 

California Golden by Melanie Benjamin

California Golden by Melanie Benjamin

352 pages

Published August 2023 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky a Go Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donnelly breaks the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport—and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of Carol’s unconventional lifestyle. 

The Donnelly sisters grow up enduring their mother’s absence—physically, when she’s at the beach, and emotionally, the rare times she’s at home. To escape questions about Carol’s whereabouts—and to chase her elusive affection—they cut school to spend their days in the surf. From her first time on a board, Mindy is a natural, but Ginger, two years younger, feels out of place in the water. 

As they grow up and their lives diverge, Mindy and Ginger’s relationship ebbs and flows. Mindy finds herself swept up in celebrity, complete with beachside love affairs, parties at the Playboy Club, and a USO tour in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ginger, desperate for a community of her own, is tugged into the dangerous counterculture of drugs and cults. But through it all, their sense of duty to each other survives, as the girls are forever connected by the emotional damage they carry from their unorthodox childhood.

My Thoughts: 

• This is the 7th of Benjamin's books that I've read. What always intrigues me about her books is that she bases them on real women from the past, many of whom you'd be very familiar with, some you're only passingly familiar with, others you've never heard of but who hold an interesting place in history. California Golden is no exception - Carol Donnelly is loosely based on Marge Calhoun, considered the first female surfing champion. As always, the women are strong women, even when they aren't particularly likable. 
• While this one didn't measure up to others of Benjamin's books (an opinion echoed by my book club), it does offer plenty to think about: sexism, trauma, drug abuse, mental and physical abuse, complicated family relationships, stereotypes and the boxes that women have traditionally been pushed into. Carol was not a good mother, but then she had never wanted to be a mother and always felt that circumstances had trapped her into being one. Both girls grew up craving love and attention, to an extent that almost destroyed them. 
• Benjamin not only finds these interesting historical women, but she also researches the heck out of the places and time periods she writes about. Truly, I could feel the heat on my face, the sand under my feet, the chill of the water. Readers spend time in the nightclubs of the day, learn about the real history behind Gidget, travel to Hawaii and surfing tournaments, and even find themselves in Vietnam on an entertainment tour led by Johnny Grant, the one-time honorary mayor of Hollywood. 
• A quibble I often have with Benjamin's books is that they can be repetitive and over full of similes. In this book, that stood out more than usual for me. 
• While this wasn't a favorite for my book club, there was plenty to talk about and I'd recommend it on that basis. 

The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak

The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak

316 pages

Published January 2004 by W. W. Norton and Company 

Publisher's Summary: 

Every family has its secrets. But toward the end of his life, George decides to tell his daughter the story of his mother and the Turk. This initial revelation leads to a narrative tour de force that follows a family through four generations and around the world―through love, marriage, and betrayal, through illness, death, and war. Mary Helen Stefaniak's charming and flawed characters and the warmth of her prose will stay with readers long after they close the book.

My Thoughts: 

Several years ago my book club read Stefaniak's The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia - we were charmed by the book and by Stefaniak, who graced us with her presence when we met to discuss the book. I've had this book of hers sitting on my shelf for many years and when I chose this years' book club theme, You Learn Something New Every Month, I thought it was a good time to read a book that addresses different cultures and employs a different story telling style. 

I'm sorry to say this one was not a hit with my book club. Although, I think it might have been better received had people found the cast of characters that was hidden at the back of the book. Many people complained that it was confusing and were surprised by some of the things that were revealed to them when we discussed the book. This I attribute to the unusual way the book is crafted. 

The story is based, rather loosely, on members of Stefaniak's own family. Told through the point of view of several different characters, we come at the story from several different vantage points. We start with George and move, without readers even being very much aware of it, to George's grandmother, Staramajka who, in telling the story to her grandchildren, is, in fact, telling it to their mother, Agnes, who is eavesdropping. It's through that story that we come to learn of the relationship between Agnes and a prisoner of war, who is presented as being a Turk (but who, we learn, is actually Serbian) in the small Croatian village where Agnes and her husband, Josef, have started a family. Josef has gone to Milwaukee to earn money, with plans to return to the village. But war intervenes and it's years before Agnes and Josef will reunite. 

We'll learn more about the circumstances of the family when we follow the trail of Josef's brother, Marko, who is taken prisoner by the Russians and presumed to have died. We learn more, yet again, from the point of view of a woman George befriended when they were young. The stories and characters merge and separate and reveal that the details of a story often vary depending on the storyteller. We learn of Staramajka's relationship with a gypsy, of Marko's marriage to a Russian and escape from the White Army, and of Josef's relationship with a woman whose daughter would later befriend George. 

While my book club may not have liked this book, I was the lone exception. Was it confusing at times? Yes. But I loved all of the stories that Stefaniak managed to work into the book and how things tied back together. Most of all, I loved the way the book ended making me want to go write back to the beginning and start again to see what it was that I had missed in the story telling. It's not unusual for me to like a book more than the majority of my book club does (and sometimes less); it's rare for me to be the only person to like a book. But here I am fine with being that person and suggesting that you disregard their opinions and give this book a chance. 

Mini-Reviews: The Circle by Dave Eggers and Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig

The Circle by Dave Eggers

493 pages

Published October 2013

Publisher's Summary: 

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. 

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. 

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

My Thoughts: 

I chose this book for my bookclub this year because I imagined it would be a book that would really make us think. I was right. There's a lot to think about in this book. While technology has done a lot to make our lives easier, we've had to be willing to give up a lot, especially our privacy, to use it. Where do we draw the line at who we will allow to have what information? Who is watching over it all to make sure no one entity becomes too big to control? How much of your personal life are you willing to give up for the company you work for, even when it seems like they are doing so much for you? Will we ever outgrow peer pressure? And has technology actually made our lives easier or more complicated, with multiple monitors to watch, multiple ways for people to get to us 24/7, and more and more ways that a failure in a system can cause chaos?

What I didn't imagine I'd find in this book was one of the most annoying characters I've come across in a book in a very long time. She's so happy to be out of her old job that it never occurred to her to question a single thing she was told to do at the Circle. Even when she'd momentarily question something she was being told to do, she'd immediately back down and do even more for the company. 

Perhaps had I read this book ten years ago, when it was first published, I would have had a different opinion about this book. But a lot of the questions this book raises are already ideas we're discussing in real life. Which makes this book not so much a dystopian novel (which, I assume, was what it was meant to be) and more a look at what life is like now. Without any answers or characters that drew me in. 

Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig

Read by Matt Haig

4 Hours, 16 Minutes

Published March 2015 by Canongate Books

Publisher's Summary:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE?

At the age of 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again.

A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth.

"I wrote this book because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we haven't been able to see it . . . Words, just sometimes, really can set you free."

My Thoughts: 

At the age of 24, Matt Haig was a step away from stepping off a cliff and ending his life. This is his memoir about how he fought back his own depression and made a life that works for him. 

If you look at Goodreads, the ratings are at either end of the spectrum. This is, generally speaking, a  book that either speaks to you and helps you with what you are battling, or you feel like Haig has no business writing a book purported to help others deal with their own depression. I'm one of the few whose opinion falls somewhere in the middle. It's admirable to be willing to share your own mental health experience in order to help those who may be having similar experiences and to help destigmatize mental illness. But Haig's experience was simply that...his own experience. Although he repeatedly says he's not against using medication, he is, personally, unwilling to use it. He recommends travel as a way to overcome depression, although most people suffering from severe depression have trouble convincing themselves to shower, let along travel. Nor can most people afford to travel every time they are battling a depressive episode. He suggests that our minds are lying to us when we are depressed (can't say that I disagree with him there); but later suggests that we must need to listen to ourselves to get us through depression. 

If you suffer from depression, this might be a book that could help you recognize ways to get through it. Or it might not. Don't rely on this book to help. It's only one man's experience. 

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

240 Pages

Published February 2014 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:

When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral.

This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time.

My Thoughts: 

Glitter and Glue kicked off The Omaha Bookworms 2023 reading, for two reasons. First, it fit our theme of You Learn Something New Every Month. Secondly, it's a book that's been on my Nook for several years and this gave me a push to read something I already owned. I assumed it would be a book that would give us plenty to talk about. I hadn't anticipated how much everyone would enjoy it, including me. Here's why: 

• Corrigan blends her life in the U.S., her time nannying in Australia and Willa Cather's My Antonia! to explore her relationship with her mother. I really enjoyed how she was able to blend the three together to form a cohesive memoir. Plus, I always give high marks when someone works in a book by a Nebraska author. 
• The title comes from something Corrigan's mother told Corrigan: "Your father's the glitter but I'm the glue." Which really got me thinking (and then asking my book club) which of my parents was which and who played which role in my marriage. 
• I became so emotionally attached to the people in this book, both the Tanners and the Corrigans; Corrigan did such a marvelous job of making me feel what the families felt. 
• So many passages that I've highlighted, that really spoke to me and to which I could relate. Some I'll share here. Some I'll save and do a Book Gems post one day. 

"The living mother-daughter relationship, you learn over and over again, is a constant choice between adaptation and acceptance." 

"...a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day."  

I so often said, particularly of my challenging bookends, that it was a good thing that they fell asleep at night. It allowed me to recharge and to go in and watch them sleep, so peaceful and sweet.  

"I crack open my book, thinking about my mother and the many moments of my childhood when she tucked herself away somewhere, enjoying what she called a party for one." 

It made me think of the times when I felt I had lost control of myself and gave myself a time out in my room. I should have been more like Corrigan's mother and done that a little more often; it's essential for a mother to take some time to care for herself. 

• This passage made me think of the times that my book club has spoken to authors and, when asked a question about their books, had them admit that they hadn't thought of the book in that way but agreed with the idea. 

"I remember a lecture from one of my lit classes about a theory called "Reader Response," which basically says: More often than not, it's the readers - not the writers - who determine what a book means. The idea is that readers don't come blank to books. Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age. Then you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book - who gave it to us, where we read it, what books we've already read."

This almost certainly accounts for much of the reason some people love a book while others hate it, why I know that sometimes I have read a book at the wrong time in my life, why I'm able to recommend a book to someone knowing they will enjoy it, even if I wasn't wow'd by it. This one I'm going to recommend to you not just because it's a book I think you might like (because all six of you reading this have your own backgrounds you're bringing to the book), but because it's a book that most women, especially mothers, will be able to relate to and take something from. 

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais

The One-Hundred Foot Journey by Richard Morris

272 pages

Published August 2011 by Scribner

Publisher's Summary: 

Born above his grandfather’s modest restaurant in Mumbai, Hassan Haji first experienced life through intoxicating whiffs of spicy fish curry, trips to the local markets, and gourmet outings with his mother. But when tragedy pushes the family out of India, they console themselves by eating their way around the world, eventually settling in Lumière, a small village in the French Alps. 

The boisterous Haji family takes Lumière by storm. They open an inexpensive Indian restaurant opposite an esteemed French relais—that of the famous chef Madame Mallory—and infuse the sleepy town with the spices of India, transforming the lives of its eccentric villagers and infuriating their celebrated neighbor. Only after Madame Mallory wages culinary war with the immigrant family, does she finally agree to mentor young Hassan, leading him to Paris, the launch of his own restaurant, and a slew of new adventures. 

The Hundred-Foot Journey is about how the hundred-foot distance between a new Indian kitchen and a traditional French one can represent the gulf between different cultures and desires. A testament to the inevitability of destiny, this is a fable for the ages—charming, endearing, and compulsively readable.

My Thoughts: 

Whoops! I was going through some book club stuff when I realized that I'd never recorded nor reviewed this book in 2022. For 2022, my theme was a book somehow related to something to do with each month. Food for November, right? Having seen the movie adaptation of this book, I thought this would make a good choice. And it did; people seemed to enjoy it. More than I did, to be honest. Probably because I'd seen the movie first and was expecting something like that in the book.

In the book, though, the protaganist of the book is not Hassan. Oh, sure, he's the guy the plot circles around. But food...the smell, the taste, the process...is the protagonist of this book. It entirely drives everything that happens here from the Haji family restaurant's humble beginning as a tiffin delivery service to Hassan's world-class restaurant in Paris. As the book progresses, food and the restaurant industry begins to take center stage, leaving the Haji family behind and Lumiere far behind. Sure, those people come up again in the book, but this is a book about how Hassan learns to trust his judgement when it comes to food and launches his career into a whole new stratosphere that is the meat of the second half of this book. 

Certainly in the movie food played a big role, but the relationships played a central role as well and Hassan's ambition was tempered by his realization of the importance of family, relationships, and his roots. I liked that. 

Still, just two months after reading this book, I read this week about the closing of what has been described as the world's best restaurant because of the changing ways of the world. It was exactly as described in this book that was written more than a decade ago. Which just goes to show you that, even in a book you don't love, there is always something to take away from the book...a little gem of writing, a memorable character, or something new to learn. And that's always a good thing in a book. 

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Read by Kim Staunton

10 hours 55 minutes

Published 1979

Publisher's Summary:

Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she's been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother. 

My Thoughts: 

Kindred has been on my list of book that I really should read sooner rather than later for at least a decade. Clearly that list isn't doing what it's supposed to do. When one of my book club members suggested we read this one this summer, I decided time travel was as good a link to summer travel as any other kind. 

But Kindred is most decidedly not the light summer read I would usually pick for the summer. It's definitely going to be a tough read for my book club members, including some things we usually try to avoid in books. But it's an important book for a number of reasons. 

First of all there's this (from the Barnes and Noble website): "Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. The Patternist series (including her first novel, Patternmaster) established her among the science fiction elite. But it was Kindred, a story of a black woman who travels back in time to the antebellum South that brought her mainstream success. For years the only African-American woman writing science fiction books, like Parable of the Sower, Butler encouraged others to follow in her path." Butler was the first science fiction writer to earn a MacArthur fellowship and the first black woman to win both Hugo and Nebula awards. It's always a great idea to read the books that broke new ground and led the way for so many others. 

Then, of course, there's the issue of slavery, decades before the Civil War. Even as we're reading about horrible beatings of slaves, especially run away slaves, rape of the female slaves by the masters, and the selling off of children and husbands, Butler continually emphasizes that the Weylins were much less severe than other slave owners. Again and again, Dana is thrown through time, forced to save the life of a white man who seems determined, more and more through the years, to kill himself and it's up to her to save him to save herself. 

Along the way Dana must learn how to balance the person she is in the present day with the person she must be in the antebellum South. When she inadvertently transports her white husband back with her once, they are forced to live the lie that he is her master and she his property. She becomes desperate to get him back to the present time, fearful that life in the South in the early 19th century will change the man she loves permanently. Through the years, and the abuse she endures, Dana begins to worry that she, too, will be changed in ways that will mark her for the rest of her life. The characters in this book are not caricatures; they are individuals, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, each with their own ways to survive. 

Kindred will certainly not be my last book by Butler. Although, I'm sorry to say, it may be the last I listen to as I felt the reading lacked the gravitas the book deserves. 

The Girls In The Garden by Lisa Jewell

The Girls In The Garden by Lisa Jewell

Read by Colleen Prendergast

9 Hours 21 Minutes

320 pages 

Published Atria June 2016 

Publisher's Summary: 

Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people's houses. You've known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really? 

On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?

My Thoughts: 

The book opens with Pip caring for her mother, Clare, who has had well too much to drink at a neighborhood party in the garden square behind their flat. That done, she ventures out into the garden to look for her sister. Now, if you didn't fully read the publisher's summary, you'll read Pip's discovery of Grace and know that Grace has been raped and murdered. So I hope you didn't fully read the publisher's summary. Because part of what I liked about this book is that assumption I made early on - it certainly colored how I read the book from there on out. Especially when it's revealed that thirty years ago, a young woman was found in the garden square, dead of an apparent drug overdose. But questions have always lingered and now they come back to the forefront, in no small part because that girl's then-boyfriend and her sister still leave on the garden square. 

Clare has moved her girls to the flat (for reasons that will later be revealed) and we learn through Pip's letters to her dad (who is where, we wonder) that Clare is less worried about what might happen to them on the garden square than the danger they might face from their father. But gradually we learn that some of the denizens of the homes surrounding the garden might be a threat. Could Leo, the father of a trio of sisters Grace befriends, have a thing for young girls? Could his father, Gordon, who has come to stay while he recovers from surgery, be a dangerous pervert? Even Leo's wife, Adele, begins to worry about the attentions Leo pays to one of the neighbor girls, especially when she learns that he had a sort fling with the dead girl's then 13-year-old sister. 

Jewell opens with the discovery of Grace and then we travel back to "Before," when Clare and the girls first arrive in the neighborhood, up to the discovery of Grace's body. After that we leap to "After" and the investigation into what happened to Grace. It's a long, slow reveal, which could have felt like it went on too long but never did, as Jewell gradually reveals additional details and how those details affect the families involved. 

My book club read this one for May and it was a hit that resulted in a good conversation. There are the red herrings, there are the differences between the ways that Adele and Clare mother their daughters, there is the side piece of Grace's and Pip's dad, there is a lot to unravel about how the past affects the future, and there is the moral piece of how the attacker(s?) were dealt with. 

This is no police procedural, no story of a serial killer being tracked down, race to find a killer before it's too late. Instead it's a mystery/thriller about the dangers that lurk in our everyday lives. And isn't that just about the scariest thing there is? 

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

384 pages

Published 2014 by Scribner

Publisher's Summary: 

Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself.

My Thoughts: 

I picked this book to read in March because of it being Irish and Toibin having written one of my club's favorites, Brooklyn. Like Brooklyn, Toibin is again writing the story of a female and doing an admirable job of it. Unlike Brooklyn (a novel Toibin wrote and published after he'd started this one and set it aside), this one was not a hit with the club, in no small part because it was hard to get emotionally attached to Nora, a character with whom a group of women of a certain age should have been able to relate. 

It's a quiet, slow novel and Nora is not a particularly likable character. We first meet her not long after her beloved husband has died, leaving Nora with four children to raise and no idea how she will make ends meet. Other writers might have chosen to make Nora a sympathy character, one who holds her children close, relies on the kindness of others, and allows us to see her pain. Nora is not that character. 

When we first meet her, Nora is tired of people stopping by to express their condolences for her loss, some people who have never before come to the house. She understands they mean well, but Nora is a person who wants to keep her life and her loss private in a small town where everyone has known everyone else all of their lives. She struggles accepting their sympathy and their offers of kindness. 

She struggles even more dealing with her children's emotional needs but we soon learn that parenting is not necessarily something that Nora has ever excelled at. 

"It was strange, she thought, that she had never before put a single thought into whether or not they [her children] were happy or not, or tried to guess what they were thinking."

Nora is vastly more likely to opt to do nothing, to say nothing, then to try to figure out what her children are thinking or feeling. As a mother, I found that hard to imagine and it made it harder to feel for a person who seemed so cold. 

At the time my book club met to discuss the book, I was freshly finished reading it. I was hard pressed to explain what the book was even about. But in the week since I've finished it, it has grown on me. Nora is a woman who never seemed to feel love until she met Maurice and now she's not sure how to go on without him. But she was also overshadowed by Maurice - everyone knew and loved him. Without him she's not sure what opinions she should have about things. And she struggles with how to move on. 

"So this was what being alone was like, she thought. It was not the solitude she had been going through, nor the moments when she felt his death like a shock to her system, as though she had been in a car accident, it was this wandering in a sea of people with the anchor lifted, and all of it oddly pointless and confusing."

Being left in such a hard position begins to make Nora tougher and helps her find her voice. One evening, watching television with Maurice's brother, Nora finds herself able to contradict him about a political matter. 

"Jim tapped the arm of the chair with the index finger of his right hand and whistled under his breath. He was not sued to women disagreeing with him, and she smiled at the thought that he might, if he was to continue visiting her house, have to learn to tolerate it." 

Gradually Nora begins to find herself, a person, I think, she has never really known, even as she learns to appreciate what others are willing to do for her. Nora begins (not without still worrying what others will think) to color her hair, buy new clothes, find her own pastimes, and redecorate her home. And slowly, she lets go of Maurice. 

After that week of thinking about the book, I can say that I appreciated it a lot more. Still, I'm not sure that I would say that I really liked it. 

Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak In The Stacks: A Librarian's Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books In Her Life by Annie Spence

Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak In the Stacks: A Librarian's Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence

256 Pages

Published September 2017 by Flatiron Books

Publisher's Summary: 

If you love to read, and presumably you do since you’ve picked up this book (!), you know that some books affect you so profoundly they forever change the way you think about the world. Some books, on the other hand, disappoint you so much you want to throw them against the wall. Either way, it’s clear that a book can be your new soul mate or the bad relationship you need to end.

In Dear Fahrenheit 451, librarian Annie Spence has crafted love letters and breakup notes to the iconic and eclectic books she has encountered over the years. From breaking up with The Giving Tree (a dysfunctional relationship book if ever there was one), to her love letter to The Time Traveler’s Wife (a novel less about time travel and more about the life of a marriage, with all of its ups and downs), Spence will make you think of old favorites in a new way. Filled with suggested reading lists, Spence’s take on classic and contemporary books is very much like the best of literature—sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes surprisingly poignant, and filled with universal truths.

A celebration of reading, Dear Fahrenheit 451 is for anyone who loves nothing more than curling up with a good book…and another, and another, and another!

My Thoughts:

"When people say books are full of wonder, we don't take it seriously enough."

This one was recommended for my book club and I worked and worked on finding a theme for the year that would work to include it. Finally I hit on the idea of a book that represents something about each month and for February it was love - in this case love letters to books. I was expecting a book full of letters to books that Spence has loved through her life and I felt certain that I would have enjoyed that book. But this book is so much more. 

Dear Fahrenheit 451 is funny, snarky, political, and, unexpectedly, a bit naughty (which, honestly, makes me love librarians even more). Spence writes letters to books she loves, books that she is culling from collections (including a book about masturbation and a recipe book filled with recipes for popcorn), and even a book collection in a person's home that she becomes a little too involved with. There is more here, though, than just the letters. Spence also includes lists of books for readers who want particular kinds of books and recommendations for people who say they don't like or have time to read. 

To Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, Spence writes about how the book saved her on the playground, when she saw it sticking out of another outcast parent's diaper bag and likens that playground hierarchy to the one in the book. 

"Since your release in 1950, you may have assumed fascism was dead, but you need only look around this lot of tyrant tots and their proud parents to see that no everyone absorbed your line about all creatures being free. While the parents at the top of the proverbial turtle heap discuss min-body connections and preschool plans on the shady benches, I'm down the throne on the broiling-hot-covered-in-bird-sh&# bench, whipping sand out of my crying child's eyes with the bottom of my T-shirt."

Most of all this book is a love letter to the idea of books. What they make us feel, how they make us think, and what they represent to society: 

"Dear Fahrenheit 451,

Don't ever change. And stay here with us, always, You were created in a library, and I'm comforted by the fact art you'll remain on library shelves around the world. If we ever get to a point where you're not included in the core of a book collection, we're all f*^#ed...Some days the world feels closer to that point than I'm comfortable with. Be glad you have a voice but no eyes. Since 1953, the talking walls are bigger and louder than ever. The modern-day "firefighters" are armed not with kerosene but snarky internet memes, reality TV, and the ability to simultaneously see more and less of the world around them." 

So many books here that I haven't read...yet. Thanks, Spence, for the recommendations and the reminder that libraries are great places and that librarians are cool. 

 

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Published February 2012 by Little, Brown and Company

386 pages

Publisher's Summary:

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 Thoughts:

I think I may have owned this book since 2012 so when one of my book club's selections for 2021 was a fairy tale book, I opted to go with this fairy tale retelling. And why had I put it off for almost 10 years? Because it has "snow" in its title and in the winter I don't want to read about snow and cold and when summer arrives I don't want to read about snow and cold. Yeah, I know, a silly reason to put off a reading a book I clearly had wanted to read because I'd paid actually money for it. 

"It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed if you lived at all."

Now I'm finding myself wondering which other books on my shelves have I put off reading for equally silly reasons, depriving myself of enjoyable reading experiences. Because, despite my fears, especially when this book began, that this was going to be dreary, depressing book, it was very much an enjoyable reading experience. 

Author Robert Goolrick said of The Snow Child, "If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, THE SNOW CHILD would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment -- a combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness in 1918." It's a perfect description of this book but there is also so much more to The Snow Child. It's also a book about marriage, communication, friendship, love, what it means to be a parent, and what family means. 

Jack and Martha are both grieving the loss of their stillborn child but they have never talked to each other about their pain and it's the coldness that has developed in their marriage that I felt almost as much as the coldness of the setting. When winter, new friendships, and Faina arrive, things begin to change between them. When an injury sidelines Jack and Martha must step up to help save what they have built, they finally become a partnership that might be able to survive life in Alaska. I like them both and so wanted them to find each other and what they wanted so desperately. 

Here is another book where an element of magical realism is at play, a thing you know I've struggled with in the past, but again it was done just perfectly for me. Maybe because throughout the book we're never really sure whether magic is at play or if the truth of Faina lies in reality. 

"We never know what's going to happen, do we? Life is always thrown us this way and that. That's where the adventure is. Not knowing where you'll end up or how you'll fare. It's all a mystery and when we say any different, we're just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?"

And that is what this book is about at its core - the adventure, the mystery of knowing how things will end up for its characters. For me, this book ended up just perfectly.