We Are Water by Wally Lamb

We Are Water by Wally Lamb
Published October 2013 by Harper
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary:
In middle age, Anna Oh—wife, mother, outsider artist—has shaken her family to its core. After twenty-seven years of marriage and three children, Anna has fallen in love with Vivica, the wealthy, cultured, confident Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

Anna and Viveca plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut, where gay marriage has recently been legalized. But the impending wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets—dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs’ lives.

My Thoughts:
Wally Lamb is one of those authors people heap praise on, raving about his writing. He's also one of those writers who, because I'm just that stubborn, I've avoided. Because certainly he can't be that good.  He is. At least he is if We Are Water is a good example of what all of his writing is like.

Annie's marriage is the catalyst for Lamb's exploration of family, marriage, homosexuality, racism, violence, loss, abuse and truth. As Lambs moves from one narrator to another in the Oh family, he slowly reveals truths about each of them as they struggle to find their place in this new family dynamic.  That shifting perspective also allows Lamb show readers how the "truth" can shift and change.

Along the way, Lamb takes the reader into the past, a past Annie has kept hidden for decades. Although it's apparent early on that she's carrying emotional baggage as the reader begins to see its ripple effects, the truth is only slowly revealed. Readers will feel as though they are reading an emotional mystery that both pulls the reader along through its 500+ pages while at the same time making them want to slow down and savor the story of the Ohs.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, check out the full tour. Now I have to go get on the Barnes & Noble site and see what other Lamb books I can order for my Nook.

Wally Lamb is the author of four previous novels, including the New York Times and National Bestseller, The Hour I First Believed and Wishin’ and Hopin’, a bestselling Christmas novella. His first two works of fiction, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True, were both number one New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for fifteen years. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine. The Lambs are the parents of three sons.

Pin It And Do It - It's A Wrap

Well, I didn't get done this month all of the things I was hoping to get done from what I've pinned but I did manage to, once again, be Pin Obsessed this month. Capped off the month with a three new recipes, a sloppy joe recipe, an Italian red wine pork roast,  and one for a Salted Caramel Bread Pudding.

The sloppy joe recipe actually calls for a Bisquick crust topping but I just wanted to eat it on buns. I didn't have tomato sauce so I used tomato soup and cut way back on the sugar and added a bit more spice. It was good and we'll try it again when we have tomato sauce. Maybe we'll even use the topping.

The bread pudding was so good I seriously considered eating it for breakfast. It's got bread, eggs, and milk. That makes it okay for breakfast, right? The recipe calls for croissants but I don't usually have croissants sitting around needing to be used up and the mixture of bread I had that needed to be used worked just fine.

I can't comment yet on how the roast turned out. I cooked it yesterday but we won't be eating it until tonight. The recipe calls for a 7-pound roast; I had a 2-pound roast so I had to tweak proportions quite a bit. I'm a bit concerned that I still may have too much seasoning on it. But there are only three of us that eat meat; no way am I going to be cooking a 7-pound roast unless I'm doing it for company and I like to try recipes first on the family before I spring them on guests. 

I do like pork roasts in the winter. Do you have any great recipes you'd recommend?

Finished the month with one last book from my Books To Read board by finishing Marlena De Blasi's A Thousand Days In Venice. This one was recommended to me by my Italian auntie and it was a great recommendation for my Fall Feasting reading.

Question for you pinners - does anyone know how to set up your boards so that they are alphabetized? I find it so frustrating to have to scroll through all of my board trying to find the one I want. My one complaint with Pinterest is that it isn't easier to find things once you've pinned them. Although Miss H helped me a lot when she showed me that I can do Shift F3 to open up a search box once I'm on a board. Did you know this trick?

Thanks, Trish, for once again inspiring and challenging us to make use of all of the pins. I love having that push to try new things. I need to keep up the momentum as we head into the holiday season!

Life: It Goes On - October 27

I am happy, this week, to report that my friend's son has been found and is safe. Thanks so all of you for sending thoughts and prayers their way. It meant so much to them to know so many people cared.

I've spent the weekend celebrating my upcoming birthday and BG's and my 31st anniversary. Great fun getting to spend time with friends - just the thing someone my age needs to make me feel better about turning *%. Yeah, I'm not giving that number up any more!


My kitty is doing much better; thanks to those who asked. Looks like she won't have to find a new home. She's been very snuggly this week; I think she's trying to make sure we love her too much to kick her out!

Here's What I'm:

Listening To: BG discovered a station on the t.v. called Sounds of the Season. I had no idea there were so many spooky, Halloweenish songs. Must be taken in small doses. Very small doses!

Watching: The World Series. We're cheering for the Cardinals as much because people we love love the Cards as because we like them. Also, because Miss H insists we cheer against the Red Sox (her beloved Yankees' archenemies). And, of course, The Voice, football, Elementary and Person of Interest.

Reading:Wally Lamb's We Are Water for review this week. Francis Hodge Burnett's The Secret Garden is on my nightstand; it's on my Classics Club list and is, amazingly, a book I missed as a kid even though Burnett's The Little Princess is one of my all-time favorite books.

Making: I tried a new sloppy joe recipe the other night, made an Australian pavlova for book club, baked a batch of cookie bars for work treats, and used up the old bread in the fridge by making Salted Caramel Bread Pudding. All new recipes - only the pavlova was not a keeper and only because I have a better pavlova recipe already.

Planning: Christmas gifts. It's time to get cracking; Miss H and I have big plans to make a lot of gifts this year.

Grateful for: Fleece. Dang, it's gotten too cold here, too early.

Loving: The colors of the season.

Feeling: Stoked about my walking. I'm starting to see some payoff for my efforts.

Thinking: I'm getting old and cranky - I really don't like Halloween night any more. I've got nothing against giving the neighbor kids candy. I just wish they'd all come at the same time and I could be done with it instead of having to answer the door 50 times in two hours. But there's no way I'm going to be "that" house!

Looking Forward To:  Celebrating my mom's birthday this weekend with my siblings, parents, aunt and uncle, and cousins.

House of Earth by Woody Guthrie - A Guest Review

House of Earth by Woody Guthrie
Published October 2013 by Harper Perennial
Source: our copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review

Once again, I'm pleased to have The Big Guy on board for a review. He jumped at the chance to read and review this one - although I'm not so sure he was so happy about once he started reading! You'll see what I mean.

Publisher's Summary: Finished in 1947, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie’s only fully realized novel—a powerful portrait of Dust Bowl America, filled with the homespun lyricism and authenticity that have made his songs a part of our national consciousness.

Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas Panhandle. The husband and wife live in a precarious wooden farm shack, but Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. Thanks to a five-cent government pamphlet, Tike has the know-how to build a simple adobe dwelling, a structure made from the land itself—fireproof, windproof, Dust Bowl–proof. A house of earth.

Though they are one with the farm and with each other, the land on which Tike and Ella May live and work is not theirs. Due to larger forces beyond their control—including ranching conglomerates and banks—their adobe house remains painfully out of reach. A story of rural realism, and in many ways a companion piece to Guthrie’s folk anthem “This Land Is Your Land,” House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape.

The Big Guy's Thoughts:
I really like Woody Guthrie's music and he is obviously an American icon for the downtrodden. He continues the theme here in House of Earth with Tike, one of the two main characters (along with Ella May, his wife) going on at length about their position in life, being controlled by the bad bankers, land owners and Ella May's father, another land opportunist (no doubt true around the depression). This theme may have more relevancy in light of the most recent recession, the middle class gap and the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The other main theme of the book  was, of course, a house made of earth and was started by a USDA flier Tike picked up. He went on ad nauseum about living in a house that is easy to make, from local materials that are wind, cold, heat and critter resistant and is inexpensive to make. These were modeled after adobe houses in the southwest United States. This also proves to be a relevant theme in years to come with limited energy resources, possible global warming and the desire to have affordable and efficient shelter for the new lower-middle class.

While I found the themes interesting, and a great match to Woody's music, I was annoyed by the 'red neck' speak of the main characters and especially wanted to slap Tike regularly for being a moron. There is a 'love' scene that is fairly pornographic that was discussed in the Forward to the book as being pretty racy for the 1930s and 40's. It's cited as a main reason why it might not have been published at that time.

I do appreciate Woody's ability to write in what might be called an Okie style and keep it consistent, probably not an easy feat. A real interesting slice of Americana, but glad he stuck more to music where he had a special influence on American folk music and the labor movement.

Thanks, Big Guy! Sorry you didn't like the book better; maybe you hit on the real reasons the book wasn't published at the time it was written.

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (1912-1967) was an American folk balladeer whose best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land.” His musical legacy includes more than three thousand songs, covering an exhaustive repertoire of historical, political, cultural, topical, spiritual, narrative, and children’s themes. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including us on this tour. For other opinions about this book, check out the full tour.

PBS's American Masters series has an excellent documentary on Guthrie's life and music. If you'd like to learn more about the man, I'd highly recommend it.

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