Jackie’s Comments (group member since Jan 02, 2009)

Jackie’s comments from the Reading List 2009 group.

Book #14 The Help by Kathryn Stockett

This book focuses on 3 women in the early 1960's in Jackson, Mississippi. Two of them are African American (or "negra" in one of the kinder terms of the time) housekeepers/nannies, and one is an awkward white woman, raised by a friend of theirs, who just can't accept the system as it is for ANY woman at the time. She's also trying to break into journalism and a New York editor challenges her to find a story that no one has done before. She chooses to write about her home town from "the help's" perspective, and begins the hard work of making these women even talk to her, let alone tell her their stories. And oh, what stories they have!

There is a wonderful contrast between the empty, vapid world inhabited by the white young women with their Junior League and country club activities and the gritty, hard-working, multi-layered lives of their domestics. These black women have tough lives in their own right, with children and husbands of their own to deal with, a community to hold together, and their own sanity to maintain as a person of color in the Deep South. But they are also privy to the ins and outs of their employer's lives--raising the white children, witnessing all sorts of machinations, knowing all sorts of secrets of these often falsely prim houses where things inside are nothing close to their glossy surfaces.

This is a fascinating book that tells soooooooooooo many stories through the eyes of 3 very memorable women. I know I stayed up reading long into the night because I just HAD to see what was going to happen next, had to know if they were going to be okay. Trust me, you all need to meet Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen--everyone needs friends like these.

Book #13
Secret Recipes For The Modern Wife by Nava Atlas

This little book, done up in 1950's cookbook style, is hilarious. It includes recipes such as "Control Freak Cookies", "Bean and Weenies of Sexual Tension" and "Hypercritical Cinnamon Rolls" among many others, with instructions to let things marinate with lost dreams and repressed rage, or offers the option to spice with cinnamon or cyanide, cook's choice. There are a few happy recipes in there too (her editor made her add them), but this is truly just a giggle for those of us whose rose colored glasses got lost a long time ago, about the same time as our tired souls turned a deep shade of jade.

Book # 12
The Household Guide To Dying by Debra Adelaide

Don't let the title fool you, or at least read the whole title, which continues "a novel about life". Because that's certainly what it is. The main character, Delia, is an advice columnist for domestic stuff, as well as a writer of several books based on a modern and cheeky interpretation of the 1861 classic "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management". She also happens to be a mother with a loving husband, two young daughters, and end-stage cancer. She figures that her final book should be, in fact, how to manage a household dealing with death. She's flippant, upbeat, well read and extremely funny
while dealing with enormous issues head-on (mostly) and unflinchingly. The book moves around in time a bit, back and forth between 17 year old Delia who was making her way in the world as an unwed teenage mother in a small town and the current organized,
irreverent, dying-in-as-practical-way-as-she-can Delia. The scope and generosity of her story is difficult to pull away from--there are quiet insights throughout the book that sneak up on you in unexpected ways but hit you like a hammer. It's a charming and ultimately hopeful story that I sincerely gets a lot of attention--it deserves it.

Book #11 Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton

Jane Hamilton, author of the emotionally wrenching "A Map of the World" and "The Book of Ruth", is trying her hand at humor this spring in this tale of two marriages and four profoundly disassociated people.

Laura and Charlie Rider are childless and the proprietors of a grand and successful plant nursery where Laura does the designs and Charlie does the hard work (including the quiet work of fixing Laura's designs). Laura is bold, bright, ambitious, completely self centered and just as completely uninterested in Charlie anymore. Charlie is an immature, simple, pleasant guy who prides himself mostly for being great in bed despite most of the town being convinced he's gay. They run the business together and make up stories about their 4 cats to give them something to talk about with each other.

Jenna Faroli is the town celebrity, hosting a syndicated radio talk show that brings in all the stars, hot authors and politicos. She is married to Frank who is a judge, Rhodes Scholar and budding amateur chef who is 15 years her senior and still in love with his college sweetheart who married his best friend. Jenna and Frank's marriage has been basically passionless since the complicated birth of their daughter 20-some years ago (an emotionally troubled and clingy young woman prone to multiple frantic calls to her mother every day). Their's is a marriage of intellects more than anything.

Things change when Charlie and Jenna meet by accident just about the time that Laura decides that she wants to write romance novels. Trying to figure out a plot, she begins to experiment on Charlie and Jenna, with Charlie's knowledge, establishing an email relationship between the two (that she partially ghost writes) until an actual affair begins. That's when things begin to get out of control for everybody.

This is a darkly hilarious novel that I would categorized as "suburban Machiavellian chic lit with a slight literary twist". It's also an extremely quick read--I knocked it out in a matter of a few hours. While it doesn't resonate like Hamilton's previous work, it's definitely worth the read for it's creativity and wicked humor.

Book #10 Sonata for Miriam by Linda Olsson

The first thing you come to in this complex book is a quote from Symon Laks: "But words must be found, for besides words there is almost nothing." This thought is central to all of the story lines in this novel of memories, silence and history both shared and hidden.

On the same day that Adam Anker loses his only remaining family, a teenage daughter, he finds an obscure lead to his father that leads him on an amazing journey through post-war-torn Europe and it's survivors. Secrets long untold are slowly revealed and truths come to painful light that somehow complete the circle of who Adam is and what he is meant to do in this life. The idea that no true love is ever lost reoccurs over and over again.

Mostly told in Adam's voice, there is a brief section where the author says that one of the other characters just "had to be allowed to speak for herself... Nobody else could possibly tell her story." While jarring at first, this change in tone, and the glimpse into years of silence it offers us, is perhaps one of the most moving parts of this emotional book.

This book truly spotlights the value of words, especially stories of people, and their ability to bring us closer together and ease our pain. Full of loss, this is nevertheless one of the most hopeful books I've read in some time.

Book #9 Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

Kim Harrison is the author of the very popular adult paranormal fiction series known as "The Hollows" (it starts with "Dead Witch Walking" and the most recent addition is "The Outlaw Demon Wails") She's trying her funny charm and fiendish imagination on the teenage crowd now, still dealing with what I at least would call paranormal beings--angels. It's a very complex world full of Time Keepers (humans who can bend time and control angels), Dark Reapers (angels who scythe humans when fate says it's their time) and Light Reapers (angels who try to prevent that fate from happening), Guardian Angels of various aptitudes, and more. Madison has learned all of this since she was scythed on the night of the junior prom, but there were some complications with all of that. The Dark Reaper went rogue and stole her body, but she managed to steal his amulet (a kind of power source) which has left her soul on Earth and given her the illusion of a body so that no one but the angels actually know she's dead. The whole book is a cat and mouse game of them trying to find each other and take back what was stolen from them. While I don't like it as much as all the vampires, witches and pixies that inhabit The Hollows, I think this is a fine start to a new series that should capture teen-age interest, let alone please Harrison's mighty legion of fans.

Book #8 Attachment by M.E. Jabbour

This book is set in the months surrounding the 2004 election. I felt bludgeoned by this book, to be perfectly honest. It is a series of manic political(mostly) and societal(to a lesser extent) rants very thinly pulled together by the whisper of a narrative about a writer in Oregon. Don't get me wrong--the arguments are actually quite well thought out and brilliant and I agreed with 95% or more of them,
though they often were delivered in such a way as to court as much attention to the orator as they delivered the intention of the same. They were so aggressive and so rapid with so little buffer around them (and none IN them) that they were exhausting. The best was an imaginary trial the writer held for George W. Bush, alleging that he has an anti-social personality disorder and therefore should be disqualified for any sort of leadership role. The intelligence and ideas in this work shine brightly, but I really feel like they would be more appropriate to a political blog than a novel. Fans of vehement political discourse will appreciate this book.

Book #7 The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Award winning writer Helen Garner returns to fiction after 15 years to write this short, intense and beautiful novel about friendship and dying. It seems intimately personal since the narrator is also named Helen, and the emotions are so raw and powerful. The premise--Helen agrees to let her friend stay with her for 3 weeks while she undergoes an alternative cancer therapy in Melbourne (where Helen lives). What she didn't know was just how very sick her friend is. Both women are in their 60s and on their own, and it becomes a struggle between needing help and asking for it, wanting to help but knowing what personal limits there are, and the boundaries of friendship and love. The issue of
truth comes up again and again--facing the truth of an illness, the realities of a moment, and the sum of a life. This is a quick read, but not an easy one.

Book #6 Irrepalceable by Stephen Lovely

This is a very intriguing novel about two families--one the family of an young organ donor in Iowa, the other of the recipient of one of those organs in Chicago. Though typically donations are kept confidential, an overheard conversation between doctors leads the curious and very grateful Janet, who received a very needed heart transplant to the names and addresses of her donor's husband, who wants nothing whatsoever to do with her, and mother, who embraces the chance to hold on to this last piece of her daughter. This is a very deep book, dealing with all sorts of tough things--the many forms of grief, the dynamics of organ donation on both the donors and the recipients and their families, dealing with chronic illness, the nature of gratitude and responsibility, and much more. The common thread seems to be how we deal with choices--both the ones we make and the ones that others do. Lovely obviously poured a lot of research into this book and it rings true on every page. This book will really make you think.

Book #5 Addition by Toni Jordan

After reading a couple of books about people dealing with death, I was SOOOOOO ready for this light hearted, quirky story, and in fact nearly swallowed it whole on a lazy, cloudy Saturday. This is a story about Grace, who lives with a form of obsessive/compulsive disorder that demands that she count EVERYTHING and live by the rule of numbers. This can be rather demanding, as you can probably guess. But she is absolutely adorable, with an acerbic wit that made me giggle many, many times. This book is all about learning to embrace, and even flaunt, who you are, no matter what. It's a first novel by Australian author Jordan who is bound to set the chic-lit world on it's ear with this delicious down-under treat!

Book #4 The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm

This is a brutally honest book about living through the last few weeks of a terminally ill parent's life. Fierce love, fierce loneliness, self-centeredness, frustration, fury, exhaustion, bitterness, memories, too harsh realities--they are all here. Robin Romm is intensely brave and puts herself, and her family and friends, under the brightest of spotlights during one of the most difficult things a family can ever go through. It isn't pretty, but it is achingly true. There are no heroes in this book, only humans doing the best they can under the pressures that surround them. This isn't the kind of book you can "love" or "hate", but it is the kind of book you will be glad you read no matter what your feelings about it end up being.

Book #3 Shelter Me by Juliette Fay

Fay's debut novel takes us through the heartache, confusion, and ultimate renewal of a young widow's first year without her husband. A fluke bike accident leaves Janie widowed with a pre-schooler and an infant to care for in a world gone very dark to her eyes. Festering wounds grow worse when a contractor shows up at the house to build a porch contracted by her husband months before. But slowly Janie comes to see that help is there for her--her crazy aunt actually gets her involved in some good ideas, the young priest can offer more wisdom than she ever dreamed, her family continues to blossom and grow and carry her with them. And the chance at new love might just be waiting for her on that new porch. This isn't as simple a story as it sounds--Janie is bitter, not a paragon of gentle widowhood, there are complications aplenty from the many "good intentions" that crowd her life, and choices are not easily wrestled into order. Fan's of Lolly Winston and Anne Tyler should especially like this book.

Book #2 Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun

This is the debut novel of Mun,also on the Jan IndieNext list, and it isn't an easy one. At the age of 13, after her father left them for another woman and her mother went completely insane (she was already half-way there, but...), Joon decides that she would be better off on her own, on the streets. The book is basically 5 years of vignette's about the various situations she had fallen into. Most are not pretty, but Joon accepts them all without anger or much emotion at all--some of that is the drugs she's on, but most of it is the fact that she has never been valued in her entire life, so she doesn't expect it now. If anything, she becomes a collector of other people's stories, a witness to lives falling to ruin. The characters are always interesting, and the story is well told if rather muted.

Book 1: Beat The Reaper by Josh Bazell

I would never have picked up this book if it wasn't the top of the January IndieNext list. But I'm glad I did. The best way I can come up to describe it is that it's an unholy but frequently hilarious combination of The Sopranos and Scrubs. It's interesting (and frightening on some levels) that it is written by medical resident, so there are endless insider jokes and footnotes (yes, footnotes) regarding hospital behind the scenes stuff (very funny but it will make you avoid hospitals for as long as possible, trust me!). The main character is a former Mob hitman who is in the witness protection program and finishing up his medical training. It's hard to decide if he's a good guy now, or if he was a bad guy then, or really just what he is. He's certainly a colorful character, to say the very least. His past and his present collide when he walks into a new patient's room and the guy recognizes him from the old days. Chaos ensues. There is a Tarantinoesque scene at the end which will send the sensitive running for the bathroom, so be warned. It reads quickly, though it requires a somewhat jaded eye to truly enjoy. Fans of Palahniuk will love it.

I've never really kept track of how many books I've read in a year, but since I've become an active reviewer at work this past year, I'm curious. So let the journey begin! It is my vow to review every book I read, so...

Happy New Year!