The Light of Paris (by Eleanor Brown): ummmmm…..a little enjoyable, given the interwoven stories of grandmother (unmarried, ugly cousin abandoned in Paris by young pretty cousin in 1920s who finds love...sort of….? Because rejected by her French lover b/c he is actually on a year’s rebellion-sabbatical before he must take on his family obligations of being wealthy) and granddaughter (extricating herself from an upscale loveless marriage). But overshadowed by too much privilege: her ability to flee to her hometown when her marriage went bad, her upscale everything, the foodie/suburb vibe. Just. Too much. |
The Night Strangers (by Chris Bohjalian): Okay, started this much earlier in the Spring, but it was too creepy to read it at night. So I picked it back up to read in daylight. All in a single day. It was compelling (I couldn’t even get out of the car, so I sat and read it until the light was gone), but different than I imagined. Somehow I thought it was going to be more about the ghosts from those who died on the flight, but it turned out to be more about the town. |
Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine (by Gail Honeyman): This one has been around the book club circles for a while, and it’s an easy read. The narrator’s voice seems quite accurately spectrum-ish, which turns out to be a result of her childhood trauma. Love that Raymond guy. So gentle, so unassuming. The obsessive crush on the musician is hilarious and painful at the same time. It was a lovely and complicated and also a simple and straightforward story. |
A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner (by Chris Atkins): non fiction. A British man who was sent to jail (sentenced to 5 years, only does 2.5, which is how it works) for some kind of financial fraud involved in making a documentary film. This is his experience, and it’s fairly horrifying. The drug dealing, the filth, the corruption, the endless reform-that-never-happens, the pointless rules, the constant lock-downs for 23 hours. Parts are ridiculous, and he seems good-humored in parts, but it seems really hard to read it. There’s a protective, isolating disassociation that I find similar to Weisel’s Night. |
The Other Story (by Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah’s Key): This was interesting and kind of compelling, although in truth I didn’t really like the protagonist; despite some sadness in his life/backstory, he turns out to be an arrogant jerk, someone who becomes shallow and narcissistic with fame. I also had a bit of trouble keeping the mystery straight in terms of who disappeared when and who killed who when. Think I got it, but I did spend another good hour combing back through the book to see if I could fully put the pieces together. I got his birth/his father; I believe I understand who killed Alexei. But who was the mysterious person that was seen in the streets? Seriously, I went back to read that a bunch of times, and can’t make this part out. |
Dead Wake The last crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. Have read other Larson books that I like a bit more (Devil in the White City and Isaac’s Storm), but this was a horrifying, slow-motion disaster. (Just want to interrupt here to say that footnotes > endnotes.) I found it difficult to keep track of so many passengers that he was following as he wove their stories together, but I certainly appreciate his deep dive into research and details -- down to the clothing! Also: *sigh, wipes tear for that Charles Dickens personal copy of A Christmas Carol! Heartbreaking. I know, I know, the loss of human life was so much worse. It’s hard to think about the mistakes made (the lifeboats ready for lowering, the lack of escort -- Germany actually took out an ad in a NYC newspaper warning of this!, the lack of communication from the British war room 47, the money-saving slow speed…). |
The Poisonwood Bible (by Barbara Kingsolver). Well, I have certainly put off reading this for as long as possible. Like, maybe 20 years. Rebecca and Barbara in the department raved about it, but I just couldn’t make myself read it. Maybe it was the missionary aspect? It was quite a ride, and almost enjoyable -- it doesn’t really have a happy or even satisfying ending. The mother stops “speaking” and becomes a gardening kind of hermit. The disabled daughter becomes successful, which is a good twist, but the oldest daughter becomes really unlikeable --although you could see it in her from the beginning-- and the older twin just…..just...whew. That’s a lot. I do find fascinating how their experiences warped them and shaped their paths, and all those paths were different. Am also fascinated by the fact that the father, who puts them all into this predicament, does not tell his own story at all here; it’s entirely told by the women around him who must suffer (because he is suffering). It’s really a tale about obsession and how that can distort and deform us, even tangentially. |
The Girl in the Red Coat (by Kate Hamer). Ugh. This was a bit of a page-turner (stayed up til midnight trying to finish it), but also too slow and also too unsatisfying. Shifts between the mother’s perspective and the daughter’s, and they’re both just tortured. The daughter’s experience of being taken (and taken from England to the US to become a healer in an itinerant preacher’s homeless-travelling-show) felt excruciating. I’m glad it never devolved into sexual abuse, but the hand-to-mouth, no real familial love existence was awful. I thought it might turn into a detective story, but it really never did, so perhaps my expectations were wrong. Gak. |
Everything I never told you (by Celeste Ng). Powerful and disturbing. The story of a teen girl who died by suicide, and the stresses and tensions that precipitated that, but also the stories of her family who are left behind to deal with the built-in stresses AND the aftermath (1 older brother, 1 younger sister, 1 white parent (mom) and 1 Asian parent (dad). Really a story about difference and conformity and our places in the world. Also about leaving/abandoning and absence. Or the presence of absence. |
Breathe The story of a family’s lung transplant journey (by Dan Murphy). Murphy is a Social Studies teacher at Lowell High who had Cystic Fibrosis and a successful lung replacement in 2017-2018. This was terribly written. It was promoted by the LHS summer reading list, which makes sense b/c they clearly want to support him; self-published through Amazon, I think. I bought a copy. Read it, and it’s amazing what he has been through: all the before-surgery life of difficult breathing, then the surgery, several strokes that cost him his vision --although some came back. The format was multiple Facebook posts and diary entries by various people close to him, so the timeline was difficult to follow and there was a lot of needless repetition. Plus, keeping track of 10 members of his family and friend group….impossible. It just became a blur to get through. |