Lisa Eckstein > Recent Status Updates

Really enjoyed the uncomfortable payoff to all the dramatic irony.

Really admiring the dialogue, which all sounds so natural and right for every character, even the toddler.

This is great, and some information was just introduced that promises even more interesting directions for the story.

Great setup of things going wrong, with likely many more to follow!

This has been a fairly exciting story throughout, but now it's really getting tense!

This is pretty interesting, but as is usually the case with time travel stories, I'm not sure it all makes sense. If an agency's purpose is to travel into the past to fix unacceptable alterations to the timeline, why not go back to yesterday and correct what just happened?

Intriguing new direction for the story.

”They'd create a grandfather paradox, possibly undoing the space-time continuum and sending them all into oblivion. Or something like that; Kin never knew if that was merely bureaucratic obfuscation to keep mission planners and agents in line."

I posted a roundup of my favorite books of 2019: https://www.lisaeckstein.com/2020/01/...

Cool setup, and already fast-paced.

I'm just not sure why this book is so long. There's a decent enough story at the core of it, but so much of the text seems extraneous.

Now that the anticipated event has occurred, I'm quite curious to see what will happen next!

Now we're getting somewhere interesting, though it's a shame how much had to be presented to the narrator in the form of another character's monologue.

I'm now fairly interested but wish the story hadn't spent so long getting started.

This has shown up on so many book lists over the years that I've always been curious. So far it's not really grabbing me, but we'll see.

”He was forever a black child who'd been publicly wronged, and so he was an altar for the well-meaning pilgrims, who wanted his grace in exchange for their patronage. At least Ava got to die before they made a production out of the great tragedy of her life."

"He was tired of pretending Ava was a perfect child; he hated that perfection was what the world required to mourn her." Fantastic, nuanced story about a horrific situation that brings two families together.

Great characters and lots of tension being set up. Excited and anxious to see it all come together!

I'm heartbroken over what just happened, so I'm definitely invested in the characters. Really hope things are going to turn out okay for everyone!

"The Professor loved prime numbers more than anything in the world... He was tender and attentive and respectful; by turns he would caress them or prostrate himself before them; he never strayed far from prime numbers."

Interesting premise: the titular housekeeper looks after the titular professor, a mathematician who has anterograde amnesia and therefore can't form any new memories.

"And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder." So much sadness and foreboding in this story.

Beautiful writing and intense emotion.

"This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well--by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion." Powerful writing.

This is as good as Patchett's incredible COMMONWEALTH. I'm going to be sorry to reach the end.

Loving this. So engrossing!

"The point, I wanted to say, was that we shouldn't still be driving to the Dutch House, and the more we kept up with our hate, the more we were forever doomed to live out our lives in a parked car on VanHoebeek Street." Sometimes I find framing devices superfluous, but this one is enhancing the story well.

As always, Patchett's characters and their relationships drew me right into the story!

So interested to find out how much our narrator will let himself see by the end of this story!

I particularly enjoyed Chapter 5, an interesting look at a few children whose levels of engagement with the XO laptops approached what was imagined, and the limitations to how their interest was recognized and rewarded.