A WOMAN ALONE IN A STRANGE LAND

 

With several challenges facing me, I sometimes post my reviews on only one of my sites.  As I have done with this latest book, Alice in Thunderland:  A Feminist Fairytale.

Intriguing, captivating, and definitely satirical, this latest task in my Alice in Wonderland Challenge was worth the time I spent reading it. 

For my full review, check my go-to site for this challenge, MOONBEAMS AND RAINBOWS.

 

DECONSTRUCTING A FRIENDSHIP — A Review of “A Line Between Friends”

It is a tale of friendship, a story of growing up, and a nostalgic glimpse of the past through the eyes of the present-day characters.

Noelle and Joel were high school and then college friends. Theirs is a relationship of near-misses, bad timing, and immaturity. But for some reason, they each hold onto their friendship, which they describe as like an interrupted sentence.

Then one night, they cross a line. And nothing is ever the same again.

They move onto different pathways, choosing different locales for their adult lives, as well as marital partners. But they pick up the thread of that interrupted sentence in their occasional phone calls and letters.

Looking back and deconstructing their relationship, we come to know the past as it unfolds toward the present in the alternate voices of Noelle and Joel, as they seek to understand the aborted friendship—something that happens when Joel writes a letter to Noelle, cutting off all contact.

It is in the reexamination of this relationship from beginning to end that we come to fully know these characters, and it is this process that strikes a chord of familiarity for the reader. For don’t we all have past relationships that we still remember, still cling to in our minds? And understanding them is essential to closure.

That is the final feeling I had in this story—closure. A very satisfying book that almost feels like a memoir, “A Line Between Friends” is unforgettable.

A definite five-star read.

HILARIOUS TALES FROM THE WRITER’S DEN

 

 

I couldn’t stop laughing as I turned the pages of this delightful collection.  From Scottoline’s “Philadelphia Inquirer” column, she has gifted us with vignettes about a writer’s life, but more specifically, about a woman’s life.  An ordinary life, told with extraordinary wit.

I couldn’t stop chuckling as I quickly turned the pages.

For the full review, visit RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS.

 

 

DRAMA FOR BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER — A Review of “Marshmallows for Breakfast”

“Kendra Tamale is looking for a fresh start and a simple life when she rents a room from Kyle Gadsborough.” This is from the front flap.

Well, you know that’s not how things are going to go, right? Trying to hide out, after the mess she left behind in Australia, Kendra’s settling down in the English village of Kent is sure to provide her with the respite she needs. Right? Wrong.

Almost immediately, she is thrust into the daily life of the single father and his adorable, yet feisty, six-year-old twins. It happens when her new landlord invites her to breakfast, and she is thrust into the midst of handling breakfast drama with Summer and Jaxon while their father takes a phone call. A very loud and obviously argumentative phone call.

Soon she is their daily go-to person, since their mother is somewhere else—oh, yeah, New York—and has some mysterious ailment.

We learn more of Kendra’s dramatic story, flashback by flashback, as we also learn about Kyle and his estranged wife Ashlyn.

Thinking this was going to be a light read was very erroneous on my part, but I was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t take long for me to thoroughly invest in Kendra and Kyle, as well as in the twins. The author’s skill at drawing the details of the characters in such a way that we could visualize and experience them had me hooked.

By the time I turned the final page, I felt as though these characters were a part of my life. Marshmallows for Breakfast earned five stars for me.

A SOUTHERN COMING-OF-AGE TALE — A Review of “Girls in Trucks”

Growing up in Charleston, with a mother who is a member of a debutante society called the Camellias, Sarah Walters is struggling to become her own person. To find love and her own way, without giving in to the code that feels stifling to her.

Some of her departures from the code include wild partying and hanging out with wild Island boys in pickup trucks. Another part of her rebellion takes her up North to college and New York for a career. Along the way, she keeps falling in love with all the wrong boys (and later the wrong men), until finally, just when she believes that she has found “the one,” she discovers that it is too late for her and the man she had put on the back burner for years.

In this poignant tale of a young woman’s coming of age, we discover similarities with our own experiences, even when we have no Southern “bones” in our body. There is something that resonates in this young woman’s history that will keep us reading.

There were times that I wanted to throw up my hands and yell at her, reminding her that her wrong choices kept leading her to hurt and disappointment.

In the end, Sarah comes to a peaceful reconciliation with what she needs in her life, and so does the reader.

I’m giving Girls in Trucks 4.5 stars, primarily because at times I found the backward and forward narration confusing. Sometimes the story seemed to skip ahead and then back, without the seamless transitions that I enjoy. But the overall story was commendable and one that I would recommend.

TWISTED PSYCHODRAMA — A Review of “The Wrong Mother”

 

 

Whenever I finally thought I had it all figured out, the author threw another twist into the plot, until finally, as the intrigue seems to be falling into place, it knots itself up again.

A murder mystery, a psychological study—these elements are set against an almost comedic exploration of the police detectives assigned to the case to form a multilayered drama.

There is nothing ordinary about this tale that begins with an affair and ends in death. Whatever might seem to be a predictable scenario is soon found to be anything but, and as we struggle to add up the clues, hoping to finally understand what happened, we keep bumping up against the incongruities, the misdirection, until finally we are desperate just to understand what happened and why.

Sophie Hannah’s story is so brilliantly complex that I could not read it too late at night, for fear of nodding off and missing some key elements.

This is definitely not a pleasure read, despite some actually humorous aspects, like the relationships between the police detectives. A story that kept me on my toes and moving ahead to the final conclusion, The Wrong Mother: A Novel is definitely a five-star read.

THE POWER OF OBSESSIVE LOVE — A Review of “The Thursday Woman”

 

Martha Sullivan appears to have it all—a loving husband and son, an interesting job, and all the comforts.

So what happens to turn her world upside down, so that one day she stumbles inadvertently into a murder trial and finds herself seemingly connected to the defendant?  Connected in a strangely obsessive way.

From the first moment that her eyes meet his, Martha Sullivan is enthralled with Everett Madison, on trial for the horrific murder of his wife Monica.  When he is eventually found guilty and sentenced to a psychiatric evaluation, Martha is totally focused on being with him.

Martha first visits him in county jail, and then risks everything to begin visiting him in prison.  Her husband, her boss, her friends—everyone tries to stop her.  But Martha cannot stop.

From there, she begins several strangely obsessive relationships, including one with an elderly and wealthy woman who pays her to participate in her sex parties.

All of this is directed towards finding the money and the right lawyer to win a new trial for Everett Madison and for his eventual freedom.

So that the two of them can be together.

What happens when she finally succeeds?  Will her faith in this man be realized, or will she, like other women before her, find herself in jeopardy?

In the TV movie based on this book, an interesting twist turned this story into a subplot for the primary tale of the author, Muriel Davidson, and her own psychosexual obsession with a former inmate.  I think I liked the movie better than the book.

There was a certain shock value in these pages, as an ordinary woman’s crumbling psyche transformed the character into someone almost unrecognizable.   And in the story’s end, we did find a ray of hope.  But this is not a book I would ever pick up again.  Therefore, four stars for this tale! 

 

 

 

 

 

DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF CONTENTMENT — A Review of “Bird in Hand”

In a moment, everything changes. One misstep, one wrong choice—then the unthinkable happens.

Alison Granville is leaving a book party for her best friend Claire. In the story of their southern small-town beginnings, Claire has described and defined their relationships, while claiming it is all fiction. Much later, Alison will see all of this more clearly.

Now she is just devastated in the aftermath of a car accident on the way home. She’d only had two drinks at the party, but she took a wrong exit, she was slightly disoriented…and then the other car came barreling through the intersection, through a red light, and everything in all their lives has changed.

In the months that follow, Alison and her husband Charlie seemingly distance themselves from each other. Alison thinks he blames her for the accident and the fallout—but Charlie knows that he is more than a little bit responsible, because he has fallen in love with his wife’s best friend.

Over time, as events unfold and as everything changes, each of the four that were part of a tightly knit friendship circle, come to reflect on how they all began and how everything is transforming itself before their eyes.

The tale is told in alternately past-and-present fashion, with each character’s past and present slowly coming together.

Afterwards, Ben, Claire’s husband, reflects on it all. He thinks: “I could grow to like this life. Maybe all of us could live several lives, giving some things up and gaining others, assembling different versions of contentment. Here in Boston, it isn’t hard to imagine that Claire was simply a part of his life that is over, a stage he went through, a phase, a bloodless leaving—like graduating from college, or quitting one job and starting another, or losing touch with an old friend.”

And Allison, also contemplating the permutations of her life, thinks: “Each moment of loss, she has come to believe, contains within it the possibility of a new life. When the unimaginable happens, and your life changes irrevocably, you may find along with the pain a kind of grace. And in the place of certainty and fear–the fear of losing what you had—you are left with something startling: a depth of empathy, a quivering sensitivity to the world around you, and the unexpected blessing of gratitude for what remains.”

Between the past and the future lie the secrets that unfold to tell this tale—lest the ending seem like a spoiler, it is the pathway to the destination that makes this novel truly unique.

Bird in Hand is a memorable tale that resonates, inasmuch as it brings out the hidden thoughts and feelings that characterize most lives on a day-to-day basis. Definitely a five star read!

REINVENTING THE PAST

When a young woman flees to New York after a terrifying encounter in the English countryside, she reinvents herself and embarks on a journey that will lead her to fame, love, and good fortune.

But just when everything is finally coming together for her, the mysterious “M” is about to encounter a dark figure from her past–a psychopath with deadly intent who has vowed to shatter her world forever.

As we finally learn M’s true identity and understand the complex dynamics of her famous family, we are intrigued by her history and captivated by the unfolding drama.

Will M find the strength to overcome her past once and for all? And will her unusual family dynamics give her the courage to fight?

What seemingly began as a fluffy, fashion story turned into a mystery, full of conspiracies and dramatic intrigue. We find in Breaking the Rules another masterpiece from the beloved Barbara Taylor Bradford.

THE UNDERBELLY OF PASSION AND OBSESSION — A Review of “Little Bird of Heaven”

In Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel, Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel, the brutal slaying of Zoe Kruller, a young wife and mother, forms the central core to the story, with two major suspects: her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her long-time lover, Eddy Diehl.

Diehl’s daughter Krista and Kruller’s son Aaron become obsessed with each other, as, over the years, nobody is charged with the slaying, the murder goes unsolved, and each young person believes the other’s father is guilty.

“Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron,” this tale shines a light on intense sexual love, the anguish of loss, and tenderness that is barely distinguishable from cruelty.

We meet the characters who play key roles in the underworld of drugs and crime, while glimpsing the vulnerabilities of each.

In the end, the secret of who actually killed Zoe Kruller is revealed, but it is almost anticlimactic. By then, so much misery has consumed and ruined the lives of some of the major players, leaving them empty and washed up. After years apart, when Krista and Aaron finally meet again for the big reveal, they are going through the motions. Krista has moved on with her life and developed into someone with opportunities while Aaron has seemingly stood still, stuck in that same place of bitterness and defeat.

What they had imagined about each other could never be. And the people they had become could no longer exist side by side in their old hometown.

When Krista walks away, finally, she is free at last. She has grown wings and can fly away–perhaps like “the little bird of heaven.”

In this story, there was so much depth and intensity that I found it difficult to keep reading for any length of time. I had to take breaks. And as I neared the end, I found myself speeding up, rushing the ending along, so I could escape the darkness of the characters and their sordid lives.

This is a book well worth reading, but not one that I would reread. Perhaps 4.5 stars.