Review: A Faraway Smell of Lemon by Rachel Joyce

Overview:

 

It is Christmas Eve. Binny has four hours to make Christmas happen and she couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings of good will to all men - least of all to Oliver. It is raining, her house is falling apart, the streets are jammed with people and it is all Oliver's fault. Darting into a shop to escape a conversation, Binny finds herself in the sort of place she would never normally visit. But in amongst the shelves is a surprising source of peace.

 

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Review:

 

Joyce has written a sweet and thoughtful short story about making peace with the past. Christmas Eve finds Binny sad, angry and resolved to forego the holiday season altogether. In an effort to avoid a conversation, she ducts into a fancy cleaning shop. Her chance encounter with the young shop girl serves as a turning point for Binny- offering solace and hope.

 

Review: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson

Overview:

 

In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. “Nirvana,” which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous”—first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology—a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

 

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Review:

 

Fortune Smiles is not at all the short story collection I was expecting. With topics ranging from cancer to the prisons of East Germany,  it's certainly not a lighthearted read. While the topics were sometimes uncomfortable, at least they elicited a response. I found the short story Fortune Smiles, where this collection gets its name, to be the strongest. Dark Meadow was a bit too disturbing, and Nirvana fell a bit flat. Overall, I didn't feel the characters were developed in any way that garnered sympathy or understanding. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of them.

Review: How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner

Overview:

In the spirit of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project comes a hilarious and heartfelt story of an aspiring author trying to rescue her single-mother family by writing the next Great American Novel.

 

Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for glory. Unfortunately, after her father's death, she finds herself plopped down in Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane's floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention, co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money.

Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material. If the Mom-character, Diane, would ditch online dating and accept that the perfect man is clearly the handyman/nanny-character, Penn MacGuffin, Aris would have the essential romance for her plot (and a father in her real life). But when a random accident uncovers a dark part of Thibodeau family history, Aris is forced to confront the fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as planned.

 

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Review:

 

How to Write a Novel chronicles family life as experience (and told) by 12.5 year Aristotle (Aris). Aris, her younger brother Max, and mom Diane, are still working through life after the loss of family patriarch, Joe.  Aris is precocious, funny, and smart.  When she's not co-parenting her little brother, she's hard at work trying to find a suitable match for Diane.

I found this coming of age story at turns heart breaking, hopeful, and funny. This is the perfect book for fans of Marie Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I highly recommend How to Write a Novel and can't wait for Melanie Sumner's next work.

Review: At Water's Edge by Sara Gruen

Overview:

In this new novel from the author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding period pieces. At the Water's Edge is a gripping and poignant love story about a privileged young woman's personal awakening as she experiences the devastations of World War II in a Scottish Highlands village.

Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of a mythical monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. What Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities.

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Review:

 

Sara Gruen has again produced a historical fiction novel that is engaging and atmospheric. When three young twenty-somethings leave 1940s Philadelphia in the midst of World War II, in search of the mythical Lochness Monster, they find far more than they bargained for. Fans of Kate Morton or Kate Atkinson,  will enjoy At the Water's Edge.

Review: No Baggage by Clara Bensen

Overview:

 

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike—it’s at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright modern take on the age-old questions: how do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? And can you love someone without the need for commitment, or any expectations for the future?

When Clara Bensen arranged to meet Jeff Wilson on the steps of the Texas State Capitol, after just a few email exchanges on OKCupid, it felt like something big was going to happen. Clara, a sensitive and reclusive personality, is immediately drawn to Jeff’s freewheeling, push-the-envelope nature. Within a few days of knowing one another, they embark on a 21-day travel adventure—from Istanbul to London, with zero luggage, zero reservations, and zero plans. They want to test a simple question: what happens when you welcome the unknown instead of attempting to control it?

Donning a single green dress and a small purse with her toothbrush and credit card, Clara travels through eight countries in three weeks. Along the way, Clara ruminates on the challenges of traveling unencumbered, while realizing when it comes to falling in love, you can never really leave your baggage behind.

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Review:

 

The book chronicles a three-week vacation- where Bensen and maybe-boyfriend Jeff bring nothing but the clothes on their backs. Interspersed are memories of Bensen's nervous-breakdown and how she met Jeff.

 

I found the book to be disjointed. The trip really took backseat to relationship worries that painted Jeff as almost entirely unlikable, and Bensen slightly unbalanced. There was also quite a bit of time spent exploring Bensen's "existential crisis,' which read more like a self-indulgent fissy fit. Rather than garnering sympathy, it all felt very forced and melodramatic. I would have like to learn more about Bensen's travel experiences, and how her grand no baggage experiment played out.

However, all that criticism aside, Bensen is clearly an intelligent and skilled writer. Her research into the scientific and mathematical implications of coincidence or Greek philosophers is stellar. Her thoughts on the nature of being are quite interesting as well.

 

I understand that Bensen and Jeff continue to travel sans baggage. I'll be interested to see how future writing manifests itself.

 

*I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami

Overview:

The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- by the internationally acclaimed writer, newly retranslated and in one English-language volume for the first time, with a new introduction by the author.

These first major works of fiction by Haruki Murakami center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat. Powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas bear all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, giving us a fascinating insight into a great writer's beginnings, and are remarkable works of fiction in their own right. Here too is an exclusive essay by Murakami in which he explores and explains his decision to become a writer. Prequels to the much-beloved classics A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance, these early works are essential reading for Murakami completists and contemporary fiction lovers alike.

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Review:

Haruki Murakami is one of my all-time favorite authors, and his first works Wind/Pinball do not disappoint. It was so interesting to read these early novels knowing the evolution of Murakami's work. With other authors, you can sense when they have hit their stride or passed their peak. Murakami's writing is consistently excellent. His turns of phrase exceptional from his very first novels.

If you've read other Murakami novels- which obviously I recommend- Wind/Pinball will give you a sense of nostalgia. Having just finished these novels, I'd love to re-read Murakami's full collection. I love how much life and atmosphere goes into each novel. Murakami creates such a sense of time and place; it's so tangible. When he describes a 'very good coffee,' my mind immediately conjures the smell and taste of the best coffee I've ever had. If he mentions a record, I recall my introduction to those songs. Even when the limits of reality begin to stretch, I can visualize and relate to the scene. There is a subtlety in Murakami's writing that allows every possibility to exist as reality. 

Review: The Children's Home by Charles Lambert

Overview:

 

For fans of Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl, and Edward Gorey, a beguiling and disarming debut novel from an award-winning British author about a mysterious group of children who appear to a disfigured recluse and his country doctor—and the startling revelations their behavior evokes.

In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up.

Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgan’s lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgan’s library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgan’s past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgan’s mind.

The Children’s Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks. Lambert writes from the perspective of the visited, weaving elements of psychological suspense, Jamesian stream of consciousness, and neo-gothic horror, to reveal the inescapable effects of abandonment, isolation, and the grotesque—as well as the glimmers of goodness—buried deep within the soul.

 

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Review:

 

Charles Lambert has written a fascinating and engaging  novel. The Children's Home is mystery, history and magical realism rolled into one.  I enjoyed this book a great deal- a fast read. I am still working out all the philosophical and psychological implications in this book. Told through the scope of magical realism, The Children's Home dark underbelly reveals the less flattering side of human nature. I would highly recommend this book for fans of John Connolly and Neil Gaiman.

 

*I received an advanced reader copier in exchange for an honest review.

Review: It Always Rains on Sundays by Roger Johnson

Overview:

Cyn. Cyn, where have you bin?

I’ve been trying to call you all day.

Expect you’re in bed with Kevin the Red,

Where the skies are not cloudy all day.

 

Life is happy for 40-year-old poetry buff and senior librarian Colin Quirke, happily married to Cynthia for thirteen years with two great kids. Not so for Cynthia. Cyn is bored.

 

This all changes when a new, younger couple moves in next door. Eddie and ditsy blonde Avril’s motto is ‘Life is for living!’. Wild parties with loud music are soon followed by girls’ nights out, and life will never be the same on the De Lacey Street cul-de-sac.

 

In the meantime, Eddie is killed in a tragic micro-light plane accident. Cyn consoles Avril by taking her to Miami. Next thing you know, she’s met up with some red-haired American guy called Kevin Ranker (aka 'the home-wrecker').

 

Is divorce on the cards for Cyn and Colin? Consolations, at least. Still, there’s always the lovely Alison at the Poetry Society. Or the new assistant librarian at work, she could be interesting…

 

It Always Rains on Sundays is a laugh-out-loud new novel from BBC prize-winner Roger Johnson. Full of intelligent humour, it is an entertaining read for fans of funny and original fiction.

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Review:

I don't really know what to make of the description I read, the publisher's quotes, and what I actually read. Somehow I cannot reconcile all the information. Narrator Colin Quirke is an utterly unlikeable, out-of-the-loop loser. He lacked emotional depth and apparently any sense of reality. If the novel was meant to be funny, I've certainly missed the humor. The description also paints the picture of a more multi-dimensional story. I wasn't picking up on any of that either. The story just seemed to plod along with no action, climax, or resolution. I had high hopes for It Always Rains on Sundays, so I'm disappointed.

*I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: A Beginner's Guide to Paradise by Alex Sheshunoff

Overview:

So You Too Can:

- Move to a South Pacific Island
- Wear a Loincloth
- Read a Hundred Books
- Diaper a Baby Monkey
- Build a Bungalow

And Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love! *

* Individual results may vary.

The true story of how a quarter-life crisis led to adventure, freedom, and love on a tiny island in the Pacific.From the author of a lot of emails and several Facebook posts comes A Beginner's Guide to Paradise, a laugh-out-loud, true story that will answer your most pressing escape-from-it-all questions, including:

1. How much, per pound, should you expect to pay a priest to fly you to the outer islands of Yap?
2. Classic slumber party stumper: If you could have just one movie on a remote Pacific island, what would it definitely not be?
3. How do you blend fruity drinks without a blender?
4. Is a free, one-hour class from Home Depot on “Flowerbox Construction” sufficient training to build a house?

From Robinson Crusoe to Survivor, Gilligan's Island to The Beach, people have fantasized about living on a remote tropical island. But when facing a quarter-life crisis, plucky desk slave Alex Sheshunoff actually did it.

While out in Paradise, he learned a lot. About how to make big choices and big changes. About the less-than-idyllic parts of paradise. About tying a loincloth without exposing the tender bits. Now, Alex shares his incredible story and pretty-hard-won wisdom in a book that will surprise you, make you laugh, take you to such unforgettable islands as Yap and Pig, and perhaps inspire your own move to an island with only two letters in its name.

Answers: 1) $1.14 2) Gas Attack Training Made Simple 3) Crimp a fork in half and insert middle into power drill 4) No.

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Review:

Having orchestrated my own move to a foreign country, I really enjoy reading about others' experiences. A Beginner's Guide to Paradise follows Alex Sheshunoff's adventure after he leaves his life in New York City for life on a remote Pacific island. I found the story sincere and real, There were plenty of opportunities to over-sell hilarious mishaps or wax poetic about life in paradise. But Sheshunoff doesn't do that. He presents his experience: the funny, the serious, the daring, and the... cheesy?? There were moments when I felt the story dragged a bit. There were quite a number of experiences I wish were explored more fully.

 

All that being said, I thought it was a charming and delightful read, and definitely recommend this book.

 

* I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: Grimm's Last Fairytale by Haydn Middleton

Overview:

 

with his devoted niece, Auguste, who longs to learn at last the truth about her family. They are accompanied by Kummel, their new and enigmatic manservant. As relations between the three reach a crisis point, vivid flashbacks tell of Jacob's traumas and heartbreaks. Old now, Jacob resists Auguste's attempts to make him take stock of his life, but memories that are repressed have a tendency to reappear in other places, and in other guises.

Throughout Jacob's travels, he is reminded of the folktales he and his brother Wilhelm collected in their Tales for the Young and Old. Most notable is the feverish fairytale of "Sleeping Beauty," which holds a shattered mirror to a life, a country, and a history. The version recounted here is an enchanting tale that goes beyond the marriage of the Prince and Princess, to reveal the surprising truth behind the evil.

In his compelling historical novel, Haydn Middleton re-creates the life story of literature's most famous brothers. It is a history that could almost be a fairytale itself, with its fabulous changes of fortune, tests of duty and honor, arrogant princes, lost loves, and twisted family relationships-all unfolding in a world of dark forests and even darker politics.

Book Review: The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

Overview:

 

For fans of Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes comes a riveting family drama with a dark mystery at its core, from the internationally bestselling author of The House We Grew Up In.

In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide?

At the center of this puzzle is Adrian Wolfe, a successful architect and grief-stricken widower, who, a year after his third wife’s death, begins to investigate the cause. As Adrian looks back on their brief but seemingly happy marriage, disturbing secrets begin to surface. The divorces from his two previous wives had been amicable, or so it seemed; his children, all five of them, were resilient as ever, or so he thought. But something, or someone, must have pushed Maya over the edge…

With psychological nuance that gets into the heart of its characters, The Third Wife is a gripping story about a man seeking the truth behind his seemingly perfect marriage and the broken pieces left behind.

 

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Review:

I am really conflicted about this book. For most of the book, I was convinced it was a simply- and perhaps poorly- executive chick-lit novel. Then I actually got into the suspense of the Third Wife's (Maya) death. I expected a great mystery revealed. Ultimately, I was disappointed by the rather predictable reveal, and offended by the overall disregard for Maya's life, and death.  Maya was the only character with any real depth or complexity. The others were self-involved and lacking any real emotion range.

All that being said, the novel did elicit a response for me (anger, disappoint, frustration with the characters), and to me that is the mark of a good writer. Not every character is meant to be likable, relatable- worth forgiveness or redemption.

Recommended: In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor

Overview: 

In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden is the story of a bittersweet romance set against the backdrop of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood — a tragedy that cost some 2,200 lives when the South Fork Dam burst on Memorial Day weekend, 1889. The dam was the site of a gentlemen's club that attracted some of the wealthiest industrialists of the day — Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Andrew Carnegie — and served as a summertime idyll for the families of the rich. In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden imagines the lives that were lived, lost, and irreparably changed by a tragedy that could have been averted.

Recommended: The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Overview:

 

A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.

When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.

But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.

Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.

Review: The Boy Who Granted Dreams by Luca Di Fulvio

Overview:

New York, 1909: Fifteen-year-old Cetta arrives on a freighter with nothing but her infant son Natale: strikingly blond, dark-eyed, and precocious. They've fled the furthest reaches of southern Italy with the dream of a better life in America.
But even in the "Land of the Free," the merciless laws of gangs rule the miserable, poverty-stricken, and crime-filled Lower East Side. Only those with enough strength and conviction survive. As young Natale grows up in the Roaring Twenties, he takes a page from his crippled mother's book and finds he possesses a certain charisma that enables him to charm the dangerous people around him ...
Weaving Natale's unusual life and quest for his one true love against the gritty backdrop of New York's underbelly, Di Fulvio proves yet again that he is a master storyteller as he constructs enticing characters ravaged by circumstance, driven by dreams, and awakened by destiny.

Haunting and luminous, this masterfully written blend of romance, crime, and historical fiction will thrill lovers of turn-of-the-century dramas like "Once Upon a Time in America" and "Gangs of New York."

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Review:

 

The Boy Who Granted Dreams is dazzling. A sweeping novel from the shores of Italy to the gritty streets of the Lower East Side; the bright lights of Broadway to the  Hollywood Hills, readers follow a blonde haired, blue eyed, Italian boy named Christmas. . Di Fulvio takes us through 1920s New York City, Detroit, and the early days of Hollywood. Told from three points of view, this is a story about the American Dream, and the lives built and destroy by that dream. My only criticism would be that the book seemed a bit long in parts. Still, I highly recommend this novel.

Recommended: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Overview:

 

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England’s history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England—until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.

Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell’s student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic, straining his partnership with Norrell, and putting at risk everything else he holds dear.

Review: The Color of Our Sky by Amita Trasi

Overview:

 

India, 1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old girl from the lower caste Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes has come of age to fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. In an attempt to escape this legacy that binds her, Mukta is transported to a foster family in Bombay. There she discovers a friend in the high spirited eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family, who helps her recover from the wounds of her past. Tara introduces Mukta to a different world—ice cream and sweets, poems and stories, and a friendship the likes of which she has never experienced before. In 1993, Mukta is kidnapped from Tara’s room.

Eleven years later, Tara who blames herself for what happened, embarks on an emotional journey to search for the kidnapped Mukta only to uncover long buried secrets in her own family.

Moving from a remote village in India to the bustling metropolis of Bombay, to Los Angeles and back again, amidst the brutal world of human trafficking, this is a heartbreaking and beautiful portrait of an unlikely friendship—a story of love, betrayal, and redemption—which ultimately withstands the true test of time.

 

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Review:

 

I can't help but compare this novel to The Kite Runner. In some ways it read very much The Kite Runner meets Slum Dog Millionaire. I could not completely escape the parallels of The Kite Runner, however after several characters the story began to stand on its own. Particularly because it sheds light on human trafficking in India. For that reason alone I would recommend this novel. While The Color of Our Sky is a work of fiction, it is a composite of real experiences. I look forward to Trasi's next novel.

Review: This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison

Overview:

 

With her husband Bernard two years in the grave, seventy-nine-year-old Harriet Chance sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise only to discover that she's been living the past sixty years of her life under entirely false pretenses. There, amid the buffets and lounge singers, between the imagined appearance of her late husband and the very real arrival of her estranged daughter, Harriet is forced to take a long look back, confronting the truth about pivotal events that changed the course of her life.

Jonathan Evison has crafted a bighearted novel with an endearing heroine at its center. Through Harriet, he paints a bittersweet portrait of a postmodern everywoman with great warmth, humanity, and humor. Part dysfunctional love story, part poignant exploration of the mother/daughter relationship, nothing is what it seems in this tale of acceptance, reexamination, forgiveness, and, ultimately, healing. It is sure to appeal to admirers of Evison's previous work, as well as fans of such writers as Meg Wolitzer, Junot Diaz, and Karen Joy Fowler.

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Review:

 

Jonathan Evison has created a real, and all too human, portrait of a life in This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance. As I hopped around through Harriet's life, I could relate to all the hopes, dreams, heartache and disappointments. Harriet was lovable, aggravating, funny, and mean. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her, but I suppose that's what life is... all the ups and downs along the way. Nothing is perfect, yet that's what makes life interesting.

It wasn't until the last paragraphs that I realize how philosophical this book was, or that the story was drawing to a close. I would have liked to spend a bit more time with Harriet.

I would highly recommend this book.

Review: Together Apart by Natalie Martin

Overview:

 

When Adam proposes to Sarah, the last thing he expects is to be single and heartbroken less than forty-eight hours later. But Sarah has a secret, and she's willing to sacrifice everything to keep it.

Going through a break-up is hard enough but having to live together afterwards is even worse, especially when it's a break-up neither person wants. For Adam, only ways to deal with it are drinking and partying. For Sarah, it’s keeping her distance and her secrets.

Against a backdrop of lies, betrayals and passion, the delicate threads holding Sarah's secret begin to unravel when her past and present collide.

Romantic, intense and heartbreaking, Together Apart explores what it really means to love and be loved.

 

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Review:

 

Told from alternating his and her perspectives, Together Apart is an interesting tale about a couple forced to share an apartment, after their sudden break-up. I found the premise to be interesting, but execution a bit lacking. Much of the interactions were underdeveloped, and over dramatized. There were several characters who's stories seemed interesting, but were left undeveloped.

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Overview:

 

From the author of the internationally bestselling A Man Called Ove, a charming, warmhearted novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother’s fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s internationally bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and an ode to one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.

 

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Review:

 

I absolutely loved this book, and cannot wait to read Backman's debut novel. Backman is a master story teller, weaving fairy tales and real life to create the story of one building's family.  Elsa's grandmother is crazy, and brilliant. Granny's actions are at times as outlandish as the stories she tells young Elsa. When Granny dies, Elsa's sent on a treasure hunt that has her discovering who her neighbors are, and who Granny was before she was a grandmother. A story about how families are made. I highly recommend My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and can't wait to read Backman's other work.

* I received an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Overview:

Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria Forester—even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that stone barrier, Tristran learns, lies Faerie . . . and the most exhilarating adventure of the young man's life.

Review: After Perfect: A Daughter's Memoir by Christina McDowell

Overview:

In the tradition of New York Times bestsellers What Remains by Carole Radziwill and Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey, Christina McDowell’s unflinching memoir is a brutally honest, cautionary tale about one family’s destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion.

Christina McDowell was born Christina Prousalis. She had to change her name to be legally extricated from the trail of chaos her father, Tom Prousalis, left in the wake of his arrest and subsequent imprisonment as one of the guilty players sucked into the collateral fallout of Jordan Belfort (the “Wolf of Wall Street”). Christina worshipped her father and the seemingly perfect life they lived…a life she finds out was built on lies. Christina’s family, as is typically the case, had no idea what was going on. Nineteen-year-old Christina drove her father to jail while her mother dissolved in denial.

Since then, Christina’s life has been decimated. As her family floundered in rehab, depression, homelessness, and loss, Christina succumbed to the grip of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity before finding catharsis in the most unlikely of places. From the bucolic affluence of suburban Washington, DC, to the A-list clubs and seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, this provocative memoir unflinchingly describes the harsh realities of a fall from grace. Full of nineties nostalgia and access to the inner circles of the Washingtonian societal elite, Christina McDowell’s beautiful memoir is a Blue Jasmine story from a daughter’s perspective.

 

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Review:

 

Christina McDowell has written a truly enthralling memoir. A mesmerizing chronicle of one family's disintegration.. At times it  was hard to believe this was nonfiction, the divide been privilege and poverty so striking. In fact, it wasn't until the later chapters that I could see beyond financial struggles, to the heart of McDowell's real strife.

After Perfect provides a unique perspective on America's economic crash-- the masterminds and the families they built and destroyed with their lies.

*I received an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl

Overview:

 

In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.

Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

Recommended: Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

Overview:

 

Anthony Doerr has received many awards -- from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins.Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats -- the chroniclers of Rome who came before him -- and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.

This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craft -- the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences.

 

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Side Note: Doerr's most recent work All the Light We Cannot See has received tons of critical acclaim, but it's far from his first inspiring work. Four Seasons chronicles his early writing career and his experience spending a year at the American Academy in Rome, writing.

Recommended: The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

Overview:

 

After years of working on a string of sitcoms, Phil Doran found himself on the outside looking in. Just as he and his peers had replaced the older guys when he was coming up the ranks, it was now happening to him. And it was freaking him out. He came home every night angry, burned- out, and exhausted. After twenty-five years of losing her husband to Hollywood, Doran’s wife decided it was finally time for a change—so on one of her many solo trips to Italy she surprised her husband by purchasing a broken-down 300-year-old farmhouse for them to restore. The Reluctant Tuscan is about the author’s transition from being a successful but overworked writer-producer in Hollywood to rediscovering himself and his wife while in Italy, and finding happiness in the last place he expected. In the witty tone that made him a success as a writer in Hollywood, The Reluctant Tuscan captivates those who simply love a good travel narrative as well as anyone who loves the quirky humor of Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, and Jerry Seinfeld.

Recommended: If I Am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus

Overview:

 

In April 2002, Janine Latus's youngest sister, Amy, wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer. "Today Ron Ball and I are romantically involved," it read, "but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways. Based on his criminal past, writing this out just seems like the smart thing to do. If I am missing or dead this obviously has not protected me..."That same spring Janine Latus was struggling to leave her marriage -- a marriage to a handsome and successful man. A marriage others emulated. A marriage in which she felt she could do nothing right and everything wrong. A marriage in which she felt afraid, controlled, inadequate, and trapped.

Ten weeks later, Janine Latus had left her marriage. She was on a business trip to the East Coast, savoring her freedom, attending a work conference, when she received a call from her sister Jane asking if she'd heard from Amy. Immediately, Janine's blood ran cold. Amy was missing.

Helicopters went up and search dogs went out. Coworkers and neighbors and family members plastered missing posters with Amy's picture across the county. It took more than two weeks to find Amy's body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried at a building site. It took nearly two years before her killer, her former boyfriend Ron Ball, was sentenced for her murder.

Amy died in silent fear and pain. Haunted by this, Janine Latus turned her journalistic eye inward. How, she wondered, did two seemingly well-adjusted, successful women end up in strings of physically or emotionally abusive relationships with men? "If I Am Missing or Dead" is a heart-wrenching journey of discovery as Janine Latus traces the roots of her own -- and her sister's --victimization with unflinching candor. This beautifully written memoir will move readers from the first to the last page. At once a confession, a call to break the cycle of abuse, and a deeply felt love letter to her baby sister, Amy Lynne Latus, "If I Am Missing or Dead" is an unforgettable read.  

Recommended: Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

Overview: 

 

One of the world's fifty living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story - and explain how his incredible mind works.

This unique first-person account offers a window into the mind of a high-functioning, 27-year-old British autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. Tammet's ability to think abstractly, deviate from routine, and empathize, interact and communicate with others is impaired, yet he's capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation. Besides being able to effortlessly multiply and divide huge sums in his head with the speed and accuracy of a computer, Tammet, the subject of the 2005 documentary Brainman, learned Icelandic in a single week and recited the number pi up to the 22,514th digit, breaking the European record. He also experiences synesthesia, an unusual neurological syndrome that enables him to experience numbers and words as "shapes, colors, textures and motions." Tammet traces his life from a frustrating, withdrawn childhood and adolescence to his adult achievements, which include teaching in Lithuania, achieving financial independence with an educational Web site and sustaining a long-term romantic relationship. As one of only about 50 people living today with synesthesia and autism, Tammet's condition is intriguing to researchers; his ability to express himself clearly and with a surprisingly engaging tone (given his symptoms) makes for an account that will intrigue others as well.

Recommended: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Overview:

 

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

Three books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Birdcatcher. This translation by Jay Rubin is in collaboration with the author.  

Recommended: Moon Palace by Paul Auster

Overview:

 

Marco Stanley Fogg is an orphan, a child of the sixties, a quester tirelessly seeking the key to his past, the answers to the ultimate riddle of his fate. As Marco journeys from the canyons of Manhattan to the deserts of Utah, he encounters a gallery of characters and a series of events as rich and surprising as any in modern fiction.

Beginning during the summer that men first walked on the moon, and moving backward and forward in time to span three generations, Moon Palace is propelled by coincidence and memory, and illuminated by marvelous flights of lyricism and wit. Here is the most entertaining and moving novel yet from an author well known for his breathtaking imagination.

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Overview:

 

From the author of the internationally bestselling A Man Called Ove, a charming, warmhearted novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother’s fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s internationally bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and an ode to one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.

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Review:

 

I absolutely loved this book, and cannot wait to read Backman's debut novel. Backman is a master story teller, weaving fairy tales and real life to create the story of one building's family.  Elsa's grandmother is crazy, and brilliant. Granny's actions are at times as outlandish as the stories she tells young Elsa. When Granny dies, Elsa's sent on a treasure hunt that has her discovering who her neighbors are, and who Granny was before she was a grandmother. A story about how families are made. I highly recommend My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry.

 

Recommended: The Things They Carried by Time O'Brien

Overview: 

 

They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated bibles, each other. And if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb. Since its first publication, The Things They Carried has become an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.

Recommended: Forever by Pete Hamill

Overview:

 

This widely acclaimed bestseller is the magical, epic tale of an extraordinary man who arrives in New York in 1740 and remains ... forever. Through the eyes of Cormac O'Connor - granted immortality as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan - we watch New York grow from a tiny settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the thriving metropolis of today. And through Cormac's remarkable adventures in both love and war, we come to know the city's buried secrets - the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and, above all, by hope.

Recommended: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Overview:  

 

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times)
(Grove Press)

 

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Side Note:  One of my favorite books. A true masterpiece. A brilliant writer, with so much promise; Toole left us too soon.

Review: Ink by Hari Kunzru

Overview:

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Original Selection

The Wall Street businessman is about to become very wealthy—serious money, you understand—but while flying from New York to Silicon Valley to officially sell his startup, he has a very damaging, very disturbing, possibly destiny-altering dream.

In this new story from Hari Kunzru, the explosive, wildly inventive, stunningly ambitious author of the acclaimed novel Gods Without Men, a titan of industry mustn't forget that he was a boy once; and an English public school past can continue to haunt far after graduation. “Ink” is a cautionary tale rebooted for the startup age.
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Review:

This short story was surprisingly gripping. As the narrator introduced his life to the reader, I could not image where the story was heading. Then suddenly the memory of a bullied childhood classmate takes hold in the narrator's mind. Along with his personal act of cruelty towards Babcock. In light of all the bullying discussions of late, this was an interesting interpretation. I kept trying to project ahead, believing the plot more predictable than it is. I was wrong on all counts.

Overview:

 

In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.  

 

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Review:

 

Kate Atkinson is one of my favorite authors, and with A God in Ruins she continues to dazzle. This is truly a beautiful novel about life's possibilities, how one life impacts another, and the effects of war on many lives. It may be a companion piece to Life After Life, but A God in Ruins  certainly stands on its own. While the ending was surprising, it unfolded so gracefully it felt completely natural. I could continue gushing, but fear I'd give too much away, while not doing this extraordinary work justice. Atkinson just keeps getting better.

Recommended: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Overview:

 

Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father’s antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. The request takes Margaret by surprise — she doesn’t know the author, nor has she read any of Miss Winter’s dozens of novels.

Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.

As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter’s account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story.

Both women will have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets... and the ghosts that haunt them still.  

Overview:

The enchanting biography of Reverend W. Awdry, a devoted pastor and family man, who adored trains. He started to tell stories about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, in order to entertain his son Christopher. Those stories have gone on to entertain generations of children around the world. A convinced pacifist, Awdry was thrown out of one curacy and denied another during the Second World War, because of his beliefs. He was a man of courage, who believed that you should live by certain rules. He built his imaginary world on the island of Sodor on these rules, and showed how those who transgressed them would always be 'punished, but never scrapped', as he said. The Thomas the Tank Engine Man is a charming biography and a fascinating insight into the life of Reverend W. Awdry.

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Review:

Overall I thought the book was a little boring. Learning the history of Thomas the Tank Engine's creator was interesting, though it often felt that Rev. W. Awdry's life was being explained between Railway Series quotes. There were quite a few unnecessary and long winded anecdotes that had little to do with the biography's central plot. Awdry was a father, husband, son, brother, clergyman, friend, and railway enthusiast.  The majority of the book focuses on a chronological reporting of the Railway Series, not the life of the man who was wrote them. In many ways, it felt like for all the stories biographer Brian Sibley, few spoke to the life and character of the subject.

 

All that said, reading about Awdry's writing process and methodology was very interesting. His research for the Island of Sodor and its residents is extremely impressive. I had no idea that Awdry ranked with Tolkien and authors who have developed vast worlds parallel to our own. I'd be interested to learn more about Sodor and Awdry, through a different lens.

* I received this book as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Overview:

 

Foucault's Pendulum (original title: Il pendolo di Foucault) is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988; the translation into English by William Weaver appeared a year later.

Foucault's Pendulum is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. The novel is full of esoteric references to the Kabbalah. The title of the book refers to an actual pendulum designed by the French physicist Léon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the earth, which has symbolic significance within the novel.

Bored with their work, and after reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, three vanity publisher employees (Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon) invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "The Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real.

The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it's just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.

Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.  

 

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Side Note: This book provided one of my favorite quotes:

 

“There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…”  

Recommended: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Overview:

 

Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old friend in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie--who is 600 miles away--because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die.

So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories--flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of his shortcomings as a husband.

Ironically, his wife Maureen, shocked by her husband's sudden absence, begins to long for his presence. Is it possible for Harold and Maureen to bridge the distance between them? And will Queenie be alive to see Harold arrive at her door?

A Memoir of Grief (Continued) by Jennifer Weiner

Overview:

 

When Eleanor Goode meets Gerald King, she's a senior at Wellesley who's won all the writing prizes. He's just published his first novel, Dirty Blond, and is well on his way to becoming one of the literary lions of his day. Gerry seduces Ellie, spinning her a fantasy of working with him, two writers, side by side. How could she have known that, in their years together, it would be one typewriter, not two; his words, not hers? How she would become the fetcher of coffee, the holder of trinkets fans would press into his hands after readings, the keeper of his legacy.

A Memoir of Grief (Continued) begins with Gerald's death. Ellie, who hasn't written more than a grocery list in decades of marriage, had no intention of writing a memoir. It's not until she realizes how broke he left her that she decides to write a whitewashed account of her life with the Great Man of Letters. Widow's Walk spends over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Critics hail Ellie's talent, the revelatory way she writes about grief, and how to live through it.

Ellie enjoys the attention, but happily thinks that'll be the end of her literary career;until her agent starts asking about another book.

 

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Review:

A Memoir of Grief (Continued) chronicles Ellie King's life after her husband's death. After years as Gerald's keeper, it's finally Ellie's chance to step out of his shadow. A quick, engaging read. Fun for any fan of Jennifer Weiner's.