Family History by Dani Shapiro

On the back of this book is a blurb from the Detroit Free Press: "One of those books most readers will finish in one sitting... because it is so intense you can't take a break. In gripping, moving prose, Shapiro reminds us of any family's essential fragility, but also of the tenacious strength of love."

Thank you Detroit Free Press for capturing the essence of this book so concisely! The art of crafting a blurb is beyond me; I am too wordy.

As for reading the book in one sitting, I did. (But  I tend to read most books in one sitting). Having read this book shortly after In A Country of Mothers,  I felt even more connected to the psychological drama and the focus on family dysfunction.  I am beginning to believe that any book with a family at its center cannot be a disappointment, although I secretly know this is not the case.

This book sucker punches the reader. It is harrowing and sad. The young daughter the parents know and love disappears--and is replaced with someone who confounds them and dramatically alters their family in irrevocable ways.  There is a sense in this book that the parents did everything right, and yet their child has turned into a very messed up teenager.  No one is to blame of course.  But it is hard to "watch" such loving individuals suffer through such family crises.    The reader wonders: why is this happening?  What explains this change for the worse?  And will she come out of this situation? Will Rachel and Ned and Kate's lives ever be stitched together?

I love the way Shapiro uses language. She has a wonderful ability to create a full scene, one that invites the reader to truly visualize the settings of her novels.  She is also adept at building  a story, beginning in the present, moving backwards and then forwards. The story alternates between the present and past in a way that allows the reader to swim around and pick up information slowly, only providing them with the full story shortly before the crescendo of the novel.  Shapiro is also skilled at her use of perspective. We see the world through the eyes of Rachel Jensen. We feel her despair and confusion, her longing for the past.  And we keep our fingers crossed that things will turn around. There is a real immediacy to the novel.  The powerful emotions Jensen experiences move beyond the page.

This book shows how quickly a family can unravel, and yet how long it takes to try to resolve the issues that led to this unraveling. In some ways it is the cautionary tale of a parent's worst nightmare.  And it is also a beautifully penned story, a full fleshed story with vivid secondary characters and a real sense of the complications, mundanity and drama of real life.

Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

I am sad I missed Jennifer Weiner's reading in NYC. She is hysterical in person!  Luckily, I was still able to buy and finish the book the day it came out.  I personally found this book to be incredibly different than Weiner's past works.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, just interesting.  This book does not take place in Philly (most of her previous books do) but instead Chicago. The book is also somewhat less snarky.  In somewhat traditional Weiner fashion there is one formerly overweight character.  So I suppose in that regard Best Friends Forever isn't a huge departure from Weiner's oeuvre.

The book is about two former Best Friends: Addie Downs and Valerie Adler.  Valerie, a meteorologist, finds herself in trouble after she acts questionably after  her high school reunion. She shows up on Addie's doorstep looking for assistance. The two wind up embarking on an adventure of sorts, true to the rhythms of their unique friendship, with Valerie leading Addie out of her overly ordered life and into various sticky situations. The book captures the sense of horror involved in returning to a high school reunion. Many of the former high schoolers individuals find themselves altered (one previous bad boy is a minister), others are still overcoming the traumas of high school (I would put Addie and Valerie in this category).  Both Addie and Valerie have experienced harrowing experiences that have shaped them as individuals and altered the friendship they severed after nine years of best friendship.  The novel is in some ways a mystery - albeit one where the reader knows more than the characters. We are introduced to a Chief of Police who is trying to explain the incidence of blood and a belt in the parking lot of a small town country club.

There is so much to relate to in this book.  I got a kick out of the fact that Addie's parents met at summer camp as mine did as well.  Additionally, I loved the way the story was grounded in history.  Addie's father is a Vietnam vet who is unable to return to the life path he had charted before combat.  Valerie's mother is a hippy of sorts.  The portrayal of high school, full of traumas and celebrations is realistic and entertaining.

The pace of this novel was excellent.  It switches perspective and includes the viewpoint of the detective investigating the blood left behind in the parking lot of the Country Club where the reunion is held.  I think its excellent that Weiner has shown she can write different genres, hopefully this will silence all of the critics who try to squarely place her in the "chick lit" category.

In a Country of Mothers by A.M. Holmes

I loved A.M. Holmes memoir, The Mistress' Daughter. I can remember sitting on the floor of BandN at 86th and Park, reading the whole book in its entirety.  Holmes story is fascinating; she was adopted, and eventually reunites with her biological parents, inviting into her life a great deal of chaos, manipulation, drama and secrecy.  I particularly enjoyed the fact that Holmes included a great deal of research on both her biological and adopted family. She found records of her grandparents' marriages.  I remember going home and deciding I needed to find out more about my own family history.

I was super excited to read fiction by Holmes; and this novel did not disappoint.  It is in many ways a psychological thriller, as engaging as my favorite psychological thrillers (written by Elizabeth Brundage).  I love the timeless quality of this novel. It was written in 1993, and so there is very little mention of the technology that currently dominates our lives.  And yet it is a truly modern novel.  Part of this novel focuses on a twenty-something trying to figure out her life. She is a witty film student and assistant who has a knack for charming people and making them laugh.  The first chapter begins with Jody Goodman calling a shrink because she is unsure if she should attend film graduate school (even though she is already enrolled).  "Hi, this is Jody Goodman, you don't know me. I'm having some trouble making career decisions."  I was immediately drawn in.  I will say it aloud myself: "I am having some trouble making career decisions."  The other main character Claire is a forty-something shrink who is still overcoming her past, as well as having problems with her preteen son and her family life with a husband and two sons.  Claire becomes Jody's therapist and they develop a deep intimacy  until the relationship extends beyond normal professional boundaries.  

Jody, was in therapy before, as she is an adopted child who was adopted shortly after her parent's biological son died.  Her life is in many ways defined by this huge loss, much the way the daughter in A Widow for One Year is affected by the deaths of the brothers she never met (and the empty hooks where all their photos once resided).  Jody, has a magnetic and endearing personality and people in the film industry are drawn to her.  Claire is drawn to Jody as well, especially because she gave a baby girl up for adoption in the same city (Washington D.C.)  and year that Jody was born.  Claire begins to be obsessed with Jody and believes she is the daughter she gave up for adoption.   There is an element of suspense: Is Jody really Claire's daughter? Could such a coincidence occur?  I will let you discover the answer yourself. I will say the situation develops to an amazing crescendo.  

This novel raises so many questions, about adoption, and family, about the real value of therapy, about the lives of therapists, about taking risks and about desire.  I highly recommend this book.  

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

I used to be a huge Hilderbrand fan.  Upon discovering and devouring The Love Season, I became a dedicated reader and so did my best friend and my mother. But I found her last book (A Summer Affair) to be incredibly disappointing.  The Castaways was a compelling read but it still lacked some of the magic of Hilderbrand's earlier works.

This novel, like all of Hilderbrand's novels, takes place in Nantucket. This novel focuses on a group of friends: four couples with a series of connections. Andrea, who is married to the police chief, formerly dated Jeffery, the husband of Delilah.  Tess, Andrea's cousin, is having an affair with wealthy Addison Wheeler (known as Wheeler the Dealer), the husband of Phoebe.  There is also a deep friendship/flirtatious relationship between Tess's husband Greg, and Delilah.  As you can already tell this is quite the soap opera. The book begins with the announcement of the drowning deaths of Greg and Tess, who went sailing to celebrate their twelfth  anniversary. Their deaths ricochet throughout the group, and as we learn about the unique way each character is grieving, we also learn a great deal of the backstory behind this incestuous group.

The story alternates through each character's perspective, so we are able to see first hand why Addison falls for Tess, how Jeffrey feels about Andrea, what lead Phoebe to become addicted to pills, how deeply Andrea and her family are affected by her own grief.  There is a great deal of suspense built into the book, and each character is well-fleshed out but I still couldn't help but miss the evocative language, and effortless storytelling found in The Love Season.

Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice

This was the second book I purchased for my long train ride. I had read a series of positive reviews of Brice's first novel, which I now plan on reading.  This book tackles so many interesting ideas and experiences.  It is a truly modern novel, discussing topics such as interracial dating, treatment of young black males by the police, black male identity,  single parenting, raising children who are mixed race, fundamentalist Christianity, adoption and what truly determines a person's racial identity.  Few authors discuss such topics so insightfully and poignantly (at least few authors I have read).  Furthermore, one of the main characters in the novel is adopted but not told by her parents. This intrigues me as my mother has consistently said that she would never tell a child they were adopted -- this fact is made inherently more interesting by the fact that she is a psychologist (thankfully, we have pictures of my mother pregnant with me and my brothers so we know she isn't lying to us!).  The book also includes so much about a wide variety of topics I know very little about: veterinarians, Native American rituals, holistic healing, Lupus, Buddhism, and being mixed race.  I feel I learned a great deal from reading this book and that isn't always the case with fiction.

Brice creates such layered and real characters.  We get a sense of each character's thoughts, emotions, and feelings even though Billie and Trish are focused on the most. We see each character as a full-bodied individual. No detail is left out.  Like real people, all of the characters are flawed. Nick is unwilling to be a parent and scared of truly letting Billie inside his head. Billie is stubborn, OCD, controlling and unhappy to find out she is mixed race.  At times she is downright mean to her newly discovered sister. Trish is somewhat simple-minded and overbearing towards her son.  Will, goes from shoplifting to extreme piousness, believing deeply in the preaching of a corrupt priest.  Billie's adopted parents withhold the truth from her.

Overall, I was captivated by this book.  It is yet another example of a well-written, unique story written about a complex and slightly-dysfunctional family.  One of my favorite types of reads!

Returning from Delinquency

I have been terrible about posting lately and have no valid excuse.  I have been reading a great deal of non fiction and have some new insight on why non fiction is so powerful. In the meantime, I am returning to normal posting.

The Beach House by Georgia Bockoven

In college, I took a course titled Contemporary American Writers, in which we studied the complete works of three American "writers" (they were not all novelists, or even "writers" in the most traditional sense of the word) and the focus on each author culminated with a three hour session with these writers. During my year in this class, one of the writers was the venerable Susan Sontag.  I can remember that Sontag talked about her love of reading and the fact that she hoped to read every day of her life, including the day she died.  I can remember relating to those words even though I clearly understood that Sontag did not read anything low brow. I am sure she would have a great deal to say about chick lit and the usual fare in women's fiction, as well as the fact that our society is so under read.  I am thinking of this story as I grapple with my own tastes in books. I read an account recently of a Phd student in literature who said the program took the joy out of reading for her. I cannot imagine that.  I know I haven't read enough of the classical works of English literature.  And yet, here I am reviewing beach reading. I am not embarrassed. One of  my friends from college said I taught her to be comfortable with reading chick lit.  I have never been ashamed of my reading interests, and I suppose I am not going to start being embarrassed now.  And yet, if I were to consider writing my own novel, I would want it to be literary as well as entertaining to read.

~

I picked up this book and another as my reading fare for a 3 and half hour train ride.  I had read most of the selection at the small bookstore in the station.  And here is the wonderful thing about this novel: it completely drew me in and entertained me greatly.  I guess my whole point is that sometimes all a reader needs is an entertaining book that makes you keep reading. I love beautiful language, but it isn't always necessary.