Books to look forward to …

This book will grab you from page one and not let go.  It’s “Where’d you go, Bernadette” meets Floridian Jews meets political scandals a la Clinton-Lewinsky but what comes out the other end is a study of relationships, love, youth, wisdom, feminism, and life.

Four narratives, four different voices, and two periods in time tells the story of a scandal that occurred between a Florida congressman and a young intern. The stories give rise to discussions about feminism, about the love between mother and child, about shame and forgiveness, about how different a story is for those who revel in the telling and those who have to live it, and lastly about how to keep going in the Internet era where nothing you do ever gets forgotten.

Characters that you love instantly – all of them – even the ones that dislike each other!  Plenty of color and a tongue-in-cheek style that keeps you laughing.  Plenty of yiddishisms for those of us who love that kind of thing. Funny insight into the political process. One of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a long time.  Great for fans of Maria Semple and / or Betsy Lerner.

This book will capture you in the first pages and simply not let you go. We learn the ending in the first few pages: a family named Richardson come home to find their house burning to the ground and a mother and daughter quietly leave their rental across town, leaving the keys in the mailbox. The story that unfolds to explain this ending is full of twists and turns and a panoply of developing point relationships between all the players.

The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio. A singular community with a long history of taking planning very seriously (their motto: “most communities just happen, the best are planned”) the residents are also very proud of their openness and diversity. The Richardson family is a good representation for Shaker Heights: a traditional family with four high-school age children, they are attractive, friendly, and open-minded. Single mother Mia and daughter Pearl rent the top half of a duplex from the Richardsons and slowly get drawn into their orbit. In the meantime, they all become embroiled on different sides of a difficult moral situation between adoptive parents and a poor immigrant who has changed her mind about giving up her baby.

The book includes a fascinating and detailed discussion of Shaker Heights as well as an elegant portrayal of Mia as the artist, including deep dives on her endeavors – photographs taken of complex projects that are months in the making. It also includes a multi-faceted discussion of what it means to be a mother in every possible incarnation from those for whom motherhood is the ultimate goal, to those who choose abortion, to those who give up their children for adoption. Race and cultural identity play a big part in the story as does the importance of reflecting on the morality of ones actions.

Great for fans of Ann Packer, Lee Smith, and Ann Patchett.

A true Melanie Benjamin book – this one follows he intertwined lives of Frances Marion and Mary Pickford from the birth of the movie industry through the late sixties.  Told with a feminist slant, we are privy to the challenges and successes of two determined, intelligent, women rising to the top of their fields while dealing with fanny pinching, disdain, and outright hostility.

As always, Benjamin imagines the dialog, internal landscape, and behind closed doors events of the story beyond what is documented in historical sources.  I’m always a little uncomfortable with this as we of course don’t really know what was going through their minds (as Benjamin readily admits) but it makes for a very compelling story.

For history buffs, the readily documented portions of the story are fascinating all on their own – Mary Pickford started the first artist run studio along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and DW Griffith known as United Artists.  Frances Marion was the highest paid scenarist (the name for script writers before the talkies) in Hollywood.  There are lots of tidbits about what Southern California was like before the movie business really took off, and how it evolved into what we know today. Part biography, part history, part drama, this is another fascinating and highly accessible look into an intriguing piece of history.

This was a spectacular book!  I was reluctant to read it because I have found many of Erdrich’s books to be depressing and I don’t like to read books that are all about the down, however I had to read it for a book club and am so grateful that I did.  Erdrich has written many stories about the Ojibwa Indians and they often focus on oppression, poverty, and social ills. This book, however, is a new story, not a retelling of an old story.  While the problems are not ignored, the focus is on how people are moving forward and trying to make the best of what they have and are.

This is literary fiction at its best. While other authors describe the thoughts and actions of their characters, Erdrich manages to capture their very essence with her breathtakingly beautiful prose.  I found myself reading very slowly just so as not to miss anything (and frankly, I am usually a skimmer when it comes to descriptive passages!).    Not a single character is a stereotype – each is fully drawn in all their complexity Each of her characters has a depth, and a background, and we are given insight into how they became what they are and how they are continuing to transform through their life.

This book will stick with me for a long time.

I loved this book! A heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, loyalty, and survival told against the backdrop of two World’s Fairs in Seattle:  the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition of 1909 and the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.  Ernest, Fahn, and Maisie are three children who find their way to the Tenderloin – a high class brothel in Seattle’s red light district – in the early 1900s.  Each has their own haunting back story but they are united by a strong drive to survive and a deep caring for each other.  This is a coming of age story, told in alternating segments with Ernest’s story in 1962. The mood painted is wistful, a little sad, and replete with innocence slowly seeping away and being replaced by kindness, defiance, and determination.

Fans of historical fiction will enjoy the attention to detail Ford gives to the mood and surroundings of the two time periods.  Events such as Halley’s Comet, the Panama Canal, the rights of women to vote, and the details of Seattle mayoral races and their impact on the moral structure of the city are sprinkled throughout the tale.  Fans of literary fiction will enjoy the delicious writing which infuses mood and sentiment throughout a plot that describes historically accurate events and the impact on a diverse set of characters.  Each character – from the primaries to the secondaries – are interesting, well drawn, and bring a unique perspective to the story. All and all a great read.

The latest Maisie Dobbs book (the 12th in the series) is every bit as captivating as the earlier books, after a couple of somewhat disappointing titles.  Maisie is back on her home turf, tackling a set of disturbing murders that are rooted in events from the first world war even as England declares itself at war with Germany on the eve of the second world war.  Winspear perfectly captures the mood of the time – children being evacuated, schools converted to hospitals and barracks, gas masks always at the ready, and the younger generation excited about enlisting while the older generation, still recovering from the losses of the first war, despair.  I love the way the series has progressed through history, drawing from historical events to provide the motivations for crimes and I love her characters who feel like old friends.

A perfect book. The story of a family – a real family – and the gentle unfolding of all of their lives. There are no major traumatic plot devices, just the very real and sometimes  intentional events in anyone’s life. Their characters are drawn out in great detail with particular care to elaborate on their relationships with each other.   I appreciated the lack of heavy handed messages – I could extract my own learning and make my own judgement based on my own values and perceptions.  Each character had their own, presented in their own sections.  We get to see, hear, and feel them all. Takes place in Portola Valley which was an extra bit of fun for me!