More News Tomorrow: A Novel
by Susan Richards Shreve
Secrets from the Past (4/13/2019)
I wanted to like this book. The thesis is compelling: return to a place you experienced as a child to confirm that a situation did or didn't happen the way you were told.
Georgianna Grove celebrates her 70th birthday by compelling her family to revisit a camp site where her father murdered her mother. A professor of Cultural Anthropology, Georgie knows how to bring the past alive, and her family, a son and two daughters and grandchildren, must accompany her. The trip involves canoes and bad weather. Dangers abound and accidents happen. They arrive at the camp and secrets are unearthed. But are they the secrets Georgie wanted told?
Like I say, a compelling thesis. But unbelievable. The son doesn't want to go in the first place, yet he does, even though he is working on the Obama campaign and checks in as often as he can. Once this character finds himself in a fearful situation, he bangs his fists against the earth. Unlikely. The son's wife, an actor working out of town, is unfortunately not with the group as she might have provided some needed support for her husband.
The two daughters live with Georgie, as does Thomas, in a house called the House of the Uncurables where stray people are free to wander in, to stay, to cook, to hang out until they are ready to leave. In this day and age, unlikely.
The most interesting character is a 13 year old grandchild named Thomas who seldom attends school and spends his time writing comic novels.
Everything that could go wrong does and no one has the sense God gave a goose.
I wanted to like the book but I struggled to finish it. It seems unrealistic, which brought me out of the story, and only Thomas was worth the time.
The Half-Life of Everything: A Novel
by Deborah Carol Gang
Half-Life (2/13/2019)
Have you ever been in the position of judging someone else’s lifestyle? Saying to yourself I Would Never Do That, No Matter What!
This is a novel which may give you pause.
Husband, David, is married to wife, Kate, who has Alzheimer’s. They have been married 25 years and the last five of which, Kate has been sick -- kept at home for three years and moved to a facility two years ago.
During the course of one visit, David runs into complications with the insurance coverage and receives the help of Jane, the social worker who handles this kind of issue at the facility. She helps him unwind the spool of disorder and he is relieved.
David is exhausted with caring for his wife, lonely for companionship, sad at her sickness, and angry that life has treated her, and them, this way.
He and Jane meet for coffee, for dinner, and the inevitable happens. They fall in love.
David assures Jane that he cannot divorce his wife; that would be cruel and it would affect the insurance coverage. He does not believe he is cheating on Kate because she isn’t really there; only her physical body is there. Jane, a woman I thought would be much smarter, buys this and they begin a relationship.
As people discover what is going on, neighbors, friends, the couple explain themselves, people are shocked, but they understand.
Meanwhile, Kate is enrolled in a trial which, like all medical trials, may or may not be successful.
I can go no further without spoilers, so I will stop here.
From this point on, you are on the fence, no matter which character you root for. Does Kate get better? Does Kate get worse? Stay the same? What about Jane? How does David live with the situation? How do his college aged boys deal with it?
Interestingly enough, People magazine, February 18, 2019, page 55 – 57, features an article about this subject. The wife has dementia, the husband falls in love with another woman, and change occurs. What kind of change and for whom, I leave you to discover.
The only problem I had with this book is that there were no bad guys. No one to blame, no one to condemn, no one to hate. I would have liked to point a finger in shame at someone, but I couldn’t do it.
Read it and see what you would do.
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