Dirt Creek: A Novel
by Hayley Scrivenor
Australian town mysteries (3/6/2022)
Dirt Creek is a fast read and encompasses the lives of several characters who are involved in two dramas - one involving a death and one involving drugs. The stories are skillfully intertwined so that they catch each other at various times in the book. Schrivenor is a polished writer who draws the plot together and completes the book with a surprise ending. This book is definitely worth the read.
The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West
by Carrot Quinn
Trains and self discovery (7/10/2021)
When I received this book for "First Impressions", I was disappointed by the sub title, "Freight Trains, Forgiveness and Freedom on the Rails in the American West" I had a vision of a slow, plodding narrative filled with the word "I". I was delighted to find that the book is well paced and very interesting. I learned about "riding the rails" from Carrot Quinn and about her search for explanations about why her schizophrenic mother was sick and how Carrot could find her again after years of absence. Carrot Quinn shared her life with a variety of people and could never quite conquer her loneliness. This book is an excellent read. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed, "The Sound of Gravel" and "Educated". The book would be an excellent choice for a book club. Happy reading!
Morningside Heights: A Novel
by Joshua Henkin
Intertwined lives (4/26/2021)
Forgo vs. forego; sleight vs. slight; principle vs. principal; flout vs. flaunt; grizzly vs. grisly; mantel vs. mantle; anaticlimactic not anticlimactic - why do these word pairs matter? Do they matter at all? Professor Spence Robin's son Arlo knows that they do not matter, yet to his father, they are a concrete measurement of Arlo's education and ability.
Morningside Heights is divided into 8 sections each one with its own emphasis on a character from the book and his or her relationships. The book revolves around the life of Professor Spencer Robin who is a professor of Shakespeare at Columbia University. He is an academic star and one of the youngest professors at the university.
The story begins when Pru Steiner enrolls in the Professor's class. Their relationship is pivotal in the book. The Intellectual Professor gradually crumbles under the diseases of Alzheimer's and dementia sometime after Pru and the Professor are married.
The novel expertly weaves in and out of the four characters' lives. It examines the joys and devastating consequences that life in a loving but dysfunctional family bring.
Often a soft touch of humor enters into the novel. In chapter 33 a scene of lovemaking turns from romantic to awkward mirroring the life of the relationship itself.
This novel would be an excellent choice for a book club as it challenges our perceptions of love, Alzheimer's disease, and awkward familial relationships in blended family and other family issues.
This novel is insightful and timely- a tribute to the frailty of familial love.
I Want You to Know We're Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir
by Esther Safran Foer
History is Memory; Memory is History (12/6/2019)
Like many other 12-year-old girls, I read The Diary of Anne Frank. I was deeply moved and saddened by the book, but I had no idea the magnitude of the terrible, horrific price paid by 6 million Jews with their lives during World War II. I never wondered what happened to the remaining Jews after their liberation from the Death Camps. I didn’t even think that there might be other Jews who were not in the camps, but had been displaced by the war as their villages had been razed and they had no place to go as entire towns were obliterated, first by the Jews and then by the Polish army.
I Want You to Know We’re Still Here opened my eyes to what happened to thousands of the Jews who were left after the war had ravaged their lives. Ester Safran Foer says that history is memory and memory is history. Collectively and individually these remaining Jews had no history, and many had no memory as entire generations of families were wiped out.
Foer set about researching her history so that she could recreate memories of those long gone. Her hunt takes her to Ukraine. She finds some of the answers to her past, but not all. Her book is a bittersweet memoir of what life was like for Jews in post-World War II America and Ukraine. The book is a well-blended mix of history and memory as Foer researches factual bases for her family and memory garnered from some distant relatives who recount, sometimes repeatedly, stories of the ones that were killed by the Nazis. These memories recalled are often small vignettes of daily life Jews led before the war.
This book is a riveting mixture of Foer’s feelings about her findings and her actual findings. I usually I find non-fiction works to be dull, drawn out and ultimately boring. I found it impossible to put down this book as I realized that the post-World War II for some Jews was as confusing and troubled as their lives before the terrible annihilation of the 6 million Jews and other ethnic groups during World War II. This book is an excellent read.
Anatomy of a Miracle
by Jonathan Miles
What constituites a miracle? (1/27/2018)
Jonathan Miles' new novel, Anatomy of a Miracle is referenced by the author as both a true story and a novel. Fiction or non-fiction? Like most novels it is a blending of both what could have happened and what did actually happen. Miles' writing is dense and none of it is to be skipped or skimmed. He packs a powerful right hook at religion, science, the medical field, and humanity sparing none of them from his gentle humor and alternatingly scathing attacks. All the characters are expertly and roundly drawn so as to make them come-along-side acquaintances of the reader. At the end of the novel one is left with the question, what is a miracle? This book is a must read. Particularly compelling for me were the descriptions of life in a war zone. But then, the whole book is - metaphorically speaking - about a war zone.
The Children
by Ann Leary
The Children by Ann Leary (5/2/2016)
The Children is a humorous, wandering story of a family as it adjusts to the death of its patriarch, Whit Whitman. Each character is a little off-center, a little quirky. The plot meanders through the spring and summer leading up to one son's marriage. However, in the midst of this fun little saga, a malevolent shadow looms. The novel turns from tongue-in-check belly laughter into a thriller which goes second by second to its surprise conclusion. The characters are like my own siblings by the end of the story-a little off beat, a little contentious, but wholly developed individuals. The plot does digress at times to the point of distraction, but is an engaging, fully enjoyable adventure in the beautiful scenery of a lakeside in Connecticut. I had a hard time putting it down the weekend I read it. A delight!
Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed
by John F. Ross
Not For Me (4/5/2014)
Although Enduring Courage starts out with an interesting biographical sketch of Eddie Rickenbacker's early life and his increasing interest in engine and racing, by page 51 I was totally bored and had to quit.
With that in mind, my review may be too biased and uninformed and should be ignored, but I believe that this book would only make interesting reading to those among us who are fascinated with the minute details of engines, the excruciating descriptions of early racing conditions and difficulties. So much time is spend on them and not the man himself.
Plus, the author uses some rather bizarre descriptive phrases in the book that just had to make me laugh! I hope no one who is not a native English speaker or even someone who is, would know what "Barnumesque hucksterism", (Pg42) is. A really descriptive phrase made me nauseated and laughing. That being on page 21 "the nose-hair-curling reek of the foundries and tanneries".
The book did flow-from one boring race to the next in which you were treated to an overly detailed dry description of track conditions, cars and mud. As I said before, this book will have great appeal to those who follow the exact details of car racing and the development of aviation.
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