Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
Published by Knopf ISBN 978052552059
Hardcover, $27.99, 416 pages

I'm a big fan of J. Courtney Sullivan's books, (her last one Saints for All Occasions was my favorite and made my list of the Most Compelling Books of 2017), because I want to meet all of her characters in real life.

Her latest novel publishes today, Friends and Strangers, and as always, her characters are so fascinating. Elizabeth is a new mom who has moved from Brooklyn to a small university town to be closer to her husband's parents.

She has been unable to meet the success of her first novel with her second one, and feels pressure to show people that the first one was not a fluke. Her husband Andrew left a good paying job to try and get his invention for barbeque grill that runs on solar power up and running.

Elizabeth spends a lot of time scrolling through her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group page, missing her friends. She decides that if she is going to write, she needs to leave the house to do it and hire a sitter for baby Gil.

She finds Sam, a student at the nearby university, who seems perfect. She bonds with baby Gil right away, and definitely needs the money Elizabeth will pay her. Sam doesn't come from money, like her roommate or most of the other students. She works in the kitchen at school, and sometimes feels more comfortable working with the older women in the kitchen than she does with her fellow students.

Sam also befriends Andrew's father (I adored him), who used to own a successful town car service until Uber came around and destroyed his business. Now he is going to lose his home, and he has become obsessed with the income inequality he sees. The gap between the top one percent of earners and the rest of the country disturbs him and he has formed a small group of people trying to raise awareness. Sam becomes intrigued and joins his cause.

Elizabeth is seeking a friend, and she becomes close to Sam. Sam comes over for Sunday dinner every week and stays to watch TV with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth frets over Sam's romance with an older man she met in London. The line between employer and employee becomes blurred.

Every character in Friends and Strangers is so intriguing and realistic. Like Kiley Reid's  Such A Fun Age, the book dives into class, money, marriage, family, older women and younger women, the meaning of friendship, employers and employees. I liked Friends and Strangers better.

I found myself thinking about the characters long after I finished the book, a sign that it is a good book for me. I felt that Sullivan brilliantly captured the struggles of college student who feels torn, the challenges of a new mother in a new place, and a man who finds the career he built gone due to changing times. I highly recommend Friends and Strangers, and once again Jenna Bush Hager and I agree as she chose it for her Read With Jenna book club on the Today Show for July.

Three Terrific Debut Novels

From auburnpub.com:

Finding interesting debut novels are one of the great joys of reading. Picking up a book from someone you don’t know, taking a chance, and then being rewarded for that can be very fulfilling. This month’s Book Report will introduce you to three debut novels.

Since so many of us have been consumed watching cable news since the election of 2016, the timing of CNN morning show New Day anchor Alisyn Camerota’s debut novel about a young cable news reporter “Amanda Wakes Up” is fortunate. 

Camerota has worked for many news organizations- Fox, CNN, ABC, MSNBC- and she gives the reader an insider’s look at what that is like. Amanda Gallo works for a small local NYC TV news station when she finds herself the only reporter on scene at a bank robbery in progress.

Her reporting lands her a job as a morning anchor at FAIR News, a new cable news network trying to make a big splash in a crowded space. Her boss wants to score huge ratings, her male cohost is a sexist blowhard, her liberal boyfriend is unhappy that she works for a company pushing a conservative agenda, and her best friend is a producer at a competing news organization who believes in anything for a story.

Camerota wrote “Amanda Wakes Up” following the 2012 election, but so many of the things that happen in the story are eerily prescient to the 2016 election. She sheds a compassionate light on people on both side of the issues, something that many people in the media have been unable to accomplish. If you are a cable news junkie, this one is for you, although I found the ending a little too pat.

If you grew up loving Louisa May Alcott’s classic “Little Women”, Elise Hooper’s debut novel “The Other Alcott”, about May Alcott and to a great extent her complex relationship with her sister Louisa, is a book you will want to read. 

May wants to be an artist, but she is torn between her love and obligations to her family and her desire to strike out on her own. She longs to study in Europe, but she also wants to break free of her financial dependence on her sister. 

Hooper takes us to late 19th century Europe, where May studies to be an artist, meeting famous artists like Elizabeth Jane Gardner and Mary Cassatt, and fighting for the rights of female artists to be taken seriously.

“The Other Alcott” is for fans historical fiction like “The Paris Wife” and “Loving Frank”, and for people who like stories about siblings. 

The best debut novel I have read in a long time is Nigerian writer Ayobami Adebayo’s “Stay With Me”, a featured book at this year’s Editor’s Buzz Panel at the Book Expo in May in New York City. 

Yejide and Akin are a young married Nigerian couple troubled by their inability to have a baby. When their family brings a second wife to become pregnant by Akin, it creates a untenable situation. 

This strains Yejide and Akin’s marriage, and Yejide goes to great lengths, including going on a controversial religious pilgrimage, to become pregnant. Yejide will do anything to get pregnant, and Akin is helpless as he watches his wife struggle with their infertility.

Adebayo’s setting of 1980’s Nigeria, with its troubled political times, is enlightening and adds to the tension of the situation that Yejide and Akin find themselves in. I loved learning about the food, customs and life in general in Nigeria.

“Stay With Me” is one of the most compelling, heartbreaking books I have ever read. It is also one of the most surprising. Just when you think you know which direction it is going, it does a 180 degree turn, and you are taken to a new place.

Adebayo is a superb writer, one who combines fascinating, realistic characters and puts them in a storyline that just breaks your heart at so many different places in the story. I found myself so taken in by her beautiful writing, I would lose myself in the story. This is a book you must read in a quiet spot, where you will be uninterrupted.

The title, “Stay With Me” brings the whole story together at the end, and I confess to tearing up and even outright weeping at the end of this beautiful story. I give “Stay With Me” my highest recommendation.

“Amanda Wakes Up” by Alisyn Camerota- B+

Published by Viking

Hardcover, $26, 327 pages

“The Other Alcott” by Elise Hooper- A-

Published by William Morrow

Trade paperback, $15.99, 432 pages

“Stay With Me” by Ayobami Adebayo- A+

Published by Knopf

Hardcover, $25.95, 272 pages

Two Books That Transport You To A Different Place and Time

Reprinted from the Citizen:

At The Water's Edge by Sara Gruen
Published by Penguin Random House ISBN 9780385523233 
Hardcover, $28, 368 pages

In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
Published by Knopf ISBN 9781101875049
Hardcover, $27.95, 416 pages

One of the great things about books is that they can transport you to a completely different place and time, a place you can visit right from your chair. Sara Gruen’s novel, “At The Water’s Edge” and Judy Blume’s “In The Unlikely Event” are two of those books.

Gruen’s best known for her hugely popular book from a few years ago, “Water For Elephants” that was made into a movie with Reese Witherspoon. Set during the Depression, it was a love story set in a circus, and it is one of those books that you will find featured prominently in new and used bookstores.

“At The Water’s Edge” is also set in the past, mostly in Scotland in 1944. Maddie is married to Ellis, the son of a wealthy family from Philadelphia. Ellis, Maddie and their best friend Hank spend their days and nights and Ellis’ family money going to parties and getting drunk most nights.

Maddie’s mother had a questionable reputation, and Ellis’ mother has not made Maddie welcome in her family. Maddie and Ellis are spoiled, with maids and cooks to care for their every need.

Years ago, Ellis’ father was in Scotland to prove that the Loch Ness Monster was real, and he was accused of faking photographic evidence to do so. After Ellis has a fight with his father, he decides to go to Scotland to prove that what his father was unable to- that the Loch Ness Monster is real.

Of course Maddie and Hank tag along, even though Scotland is in the middle of WWII, with bombings from the Germans a frighteningly common occurrence and rationing of food in effect. They are so oblivious it never occurs to them that this is a bad idea.

They end up in a small Scottish town at an inn run by a gruff man who is not happy see these spoiled Americans show up on his doorstep expecting to waited on hand and foot, as if at a five star hotel. 

Over the course of their stay, Maddie becomes involved with the people who work at the inn, while Ellis and Hank spend their time drinking and trying to find the monster. Maddie begins to see how little character Ellis and Hank have, how cruel they can be to anyone they consider beneath their station, even her.

Watching Maddie evolve and grow over the course of the story, becoming a stronger, more caring woman gives “At The Water’s Edge” its heart, and she is an unforgettable character. I liked “At The Water’s Edge” even more than “Water For Elephants”, I found it to be a deeper, richer story and I highly recommend it. 

Judy Blume, known mostly for her classic children’s books, bases her new adult novel “In The Unlikely Event” on events that occurred in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1951-52 when she was a teenager. 

In the space of less than two months, three passenger planes crashed over the city of Elizabeth, killing many. Blume brilliantly takes this true story and we see how the crashes affect the people of the city.

She includes real characters and adds her own, and we see the story mainly through the eyes of teenage Miri, who lives with her single mother (she never knew her father) and her loving grandmother.

Miri is going through all of the usual teenage angst, meeting her first love, hanging out with her best friends, when the first plane crashes. Miri sees it happen, as the plane nearly crashes into the school where she is at a holiday party.

The crash stuns the city, and when a second plane from Syracuse crashes near a school, crazy conspiracy theories begin to be discussed. Some teens have heard that aliens are crashing the planes, looking for children to abduct.

When a third plane crashes, just outside an orphanage, there are survivors and Miri’s young boyfriend is a hero who rushes to save people trapped in the plane. 

Blume does an amazing job creating her story around the real events. Through Miri and her friends and family we see how these events frighten people, making them uneasy. Given the unsettled nature of today’s world, with terrorism on the rise, “In The Unlikely Event” , although set in a simpler time, can feel contemporary.

But Blume’s theme here is a good one, as spoken by Miri’s mother to Miri when Miri expresses her fear of flying. She tells Miri “you don’t want your fears to limit your possibilities”. That is good advice indeed, and “In The Unlikely Event” is a book worth waiting for from Judy Blume.

“At The Water’s Edge”- A

“In The Unlikely Event”- B+

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Published by Knopf ISBN 978-0-385-35285-7
Hardcover, $26.95, 334 pages

If anyone had recommended to me a novel about Australian POWs in a WWII Japanese prison camp in Thailand, I would probably say "no thanks." But then I saw the book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, on the bookshelf at the villa where we vacation and it kept beckoning to me. Every time I passed that bookshelf, the pull to read it felt stronger.

I finally gave in and picked up last year's Man Booker Prize winner and dove in. From the very beginning, I was in the thrall of this incredible story with writing that was beyond beautiful. Early on, the main character Dr. Dorrigo Evans has to write a forward for a book of drawings by a fellow POW.

"He looked at his forward, written, as ever, in his customary green ink, with the simple, if guilty, hope that in the abyss that lay between his dream and his failure there might be something worth reading in which the truth could be felt."

That sentence from page 21 is a stunning example of the gorgeous language in this emotionally powerful novel. Another is this one:

"Dorrigo Evans hated virtue, hated virtue being admired, hated people who pretended he had virtue or pretended to virtue themselves. And the more he was accused of virtue as he grew older, the more he hated it. He did not believe in virtue. Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause."

Dr. Evans becomes a celebrity in Australia because of his POW experience, and we see him as an older man looking back on his life experience. He is a famous doctor, long married to a woman whom he consistently cheats on.

As a young man waiting to go to war, he falls in love and has a passionate affair with his uncle's wife, a woman who becomes the love of his life, the woman he cannot forget. Although he loves Amy, he marries Ella, but it is Amy he keeps in his heart during his captivity and beyond.

The bulk of the story takes place in a Japanese POW prison camp. As an officer and a doctor, Dorry's rank gave him a little authority. The men in the camp were used as slave labor to build a railroad. The Japanese wanted to show the world their superiority by building a railroad from Thailand to Burma.

The camp conditions were brutal, and the Japanese soldiers running it were savage. Dorry did his best to shield the sickest prisoners from inhuman work, but he couldn't always win. We meet the men in the camp and see how strong the will to survive truly is.

The men are beaten and starved and forced to work at slave labor. They are pushed beyond human limits, and injury, disease and death are constant companions. The Japanese officers believe that the prisoners' work will glorify the Japanese empire, and their complaints about the brutal conditions confound them. They were treated similarly by their superiors, and feel the prisoners are weak-willed.

The scenes in the camp are horrific and hard to read. The men must work together to survive, yet each man is ultimately on his own as we see in the most harrowing and powerful scene. The one thing that shines through this astonishing novel is the power of human resilience, the strength of the will to survive.

 At the end of the novel, we see what happened to many of the men, including the Japanese officers, which I found enlightening.

My review cannot possibly do justice to this phenomenal literary achievement, I'm not sure any review can. The only thing I can say is that to miss out on reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North would be a huge loss. This is a book that will live on in my mind for a very long time.

rating 5 of 5

Weekend Cooking- The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman
Published by Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 978-0-307-59565-2
Hardcover, $35, 311 pages

It's been over a month since I've blogged. Between decorating, buying gifts, wrapping gifts, writing out 85 Christmas cards, attending all of the many Christmas work events for my husband's job, and volunteering four days a week at The Book Cellar, (the used bookstore at our local NYPL Webster Library run by all volunteers), blogging was the one thing that got put on hold.

Last week, I found a copy of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman and I promptly purchased it. It's a gorgeous cookbook, written by a popular blogger who cooks in her tiny New York City apartment kitchen, which is no bigger than mine. (So there goes my excuse that the reason I can't cook anything in my kitchen because it's too small.)

I love that for each recipe Perelman gives the reader a little story about how she came up with the recipe. The ingredients are listed to the side, along with directions, and sometimes a 'cooking note' or 'do ahead' suggestion.

The photos in the book are simply stunning. I drooled just looking at them (the potato frittata with feta and scallions, butternut squash and caramelized onion galette, and peach dumplings with bourbon hard sauce in particular caught my eye), and there are 452 full color illustrations in the book for those of you who like your cookbooks with photos. (Which I do)

The book is divided into the typical sections- Breakfast, Salad, Main Dishes- and close to one-third of the book is devoted to Sweets. At the end, she has a chapter, How To Throw a Dinner Party, that gives you a entire party's worth of appetizers and a few drink recipes that you could follow in its entirety to host a smashing get-together that will impress your friends.

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is not for beginning cooks. I'd put this in the category for fans of Martha Stewart or maybe The Barefoot Contessa (if you know what grissini and gougeres are, this book is for you). It is a gorgeous book, and would make a lovely gift for someone you know who is an accomplished and enthusiastic cook.

rating 4 stars

The Smitten Kitchen website is here.

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
Published by Knopf, ISBN 978-0307962904
Hardcover, $25.95, 272 pages

Genre: Literary Fiction
Plot: Joan is a young professional ballerina who meets Aslan, a famous Russian ballet legend and helps him to escape to the United States. After their torrid affair ends, she goes back home, marries her high school boyfriend and they have a son together. Years later, the boy becomes a dancer himself and wishes to meet the famous dancer his mother once knew.

My Review: In Maggie Shipstead's first novel, Seating Arrangements, she managed to brilliantly capture the voice of a middle-aged man contemplating an affair during the weekend of his daughter's wedding. I was so impressed with Shipstead's beautifully crafted sentences, it was like she spent hours making each one perfect.

In Astonish Me, Shipstead once again drops us into a world we don't know. We feel what it's like to be a part of a ballet company, the competition, the discipline and way one must give oneself completely over to become a dancer worthy of being part of a ballet company. Like athletes, at some point everyone must come to the realization that they are no longer good enough to go to the next level.

The novel moves back and forth in time, and we see Joan as a young dancer and then as a wife, mother and teacher. Joan's husband has loved her forever, but sometimes he feels she doesn't love him or their life as much. He says to Joan:

"Most of the time now you're here with me- really here, invested; it's not like it was at first- and I think, she's letting me know her, really know her the way people do when they're married. And at other times you're so distant it's like someone's swapped you out for a forgery. You seem like you're going through the motions."

One of the most interesting characters in the novel is Elaine, Joan's friend from the dance company. She is a better dancer than Joan, and has a long-time relationship with the dancer who founded their company. Shipstead could have another entire novel from Elaine's point-of-view.

Astonish Me is another brava performance from Shipstead. Joan is a fascinating protagonist, so complicated and although she is so closed up, Shipstead lets us see inside to who she really is. Fans of ballet will definitely like this insider's look.

rating 5 of 5 stars

Casebook by Mona Simpson

Casebook by Mona Simpson
Published by Knopf ISBN 97880385351416
Hardcover, $25.95, 336 pages

As Mona Simpson's newest novel, Casebook opens, Miles is twelve years old when his parents separate. His mom, Irene (whom he calls the Mims) is a mathematician, not an occupation you find frequently in novels. His father Evan is a lawyer in the entertainment industry and they live in Los Angeles.

He has younger twin sisters whom he calls Boop One and Boop Two. His best friend Hector's parents aren't together either. Hector has a bit of a crush on the Mims, and he is more than willing to help Miles figure out why Mims and Evans are separated and whether they are headed towards divorce.

Miles has heard rumblings that Mims cheated on his dad, and to find out the truth he rigs up a phone extension so that he can listen to his mother's phone conversations. Mims soon begins dating Eli, who works for the National Service Foundation in Washington.

Eli seems like a good guy, but he is in the midst of a divorce from his wife and he misses his young son. His mother recently died, and he has a brother who has mental health issues. Eli promises Mims that he will move out to Los Angeles and they will be a family, she just has to give him time. And more time. And more time. And then he has to take care of his dying cat, who seems to hang on forever.

Miles and Hector become suspicious of Eli, so they seek out a private investigator, whose jobs usually consist of background checks on reality show contestants (Big Brother, The Bachelor), but there is something about these boys that gets to him, and he agrees to help them without pay.

Casebook puts me in mind of Caroline Leavitt's recent novel Is This Tomorrow?. They both tell the story of a lonely young boy, who loves his mom very much, and takes on her problems. They both tell the story from the boy as an adult looking back on his life. And they both feature strong characterizations and beautiful writing.

It took me awhile to get into Casebook, but about halfway in, I fell in love. Miles and Hector are such real, wonderful boys, trying to make sense of an adult world. Mims got to me too; she so wants this relationship with Eli to be the real deal.

Simpson creates believable characters that you feel you know. Her description of Sare, one of Mims's friends is a good example.

"She was way cooler than my parents. Sare was a very smart person who never tried anything too hard for her. She had that confidence and that boredom."

My only criticism of the book is that there are many characters, and at first it is difficult to keep track of who belonged to whom. And the fact that Miles had nicknames for his mom and sisters confused me when other characters called them by their given names.

Miles and Hector write a comic book based partly on Eli, and I'm glad we get to see the results of their work. Hector also has footnotes in the book, giving his point of view on things that Miles has written about him, which adds a unique perspective.

The ending is poignant, much like Is This Tomorrow?, and if you liked that novel, you will love Casebook, as I did. It's a beautiful coming-of-age story, sure to touch your heart.

rating 5 of 5

My review of Is This Tomorrow? is here.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Mona Simpson's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Mona Simpson’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, April 14th:  Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Tuesday, April 15th:  Book Chatter

Tuesday, April 15th:  Guiltless Reading

Wednesday, April 16th:  From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, April 16th:  5 Minutes for Books

Thursday, April 17th:  Bookchickdi

Friday, April 18th:  She Treads Softly

Monday, April 21st:  Entomology of a Bookworm

Monday, April 21st:  Simply Stacie

Monday, April 21st:  A Bookish Way of Life

Tuesday, April 22nd:  Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Wednesday, April 23rd:  Anita Loves Books

Wednesday, April 23rd:  Guiltless Reading - guest post “A Rejection”

Thursday, April 24th:  Lit and Life

Friday, April 25th:  Chaotic Compendiums

Saturday, April 26th:  Chaotic Compendiums -  guest post “How I Found My POV”

Monday, April 28th:  Book-alicious Mama

Monday, April 28th:  Daily Mayo

Tuesday, April 29th:  Love at First Book

Tuesday, April 29th:  Fiction Addict

Wednesday, April 30th:  Bookish Ardour

Wednesday, April 30th:  Booksie’s Blog

Thursday, May 1st:  Musings of a Bookish Kitty

Friday, May 2nd:  Missris

Monday, May 5th:  Bibliophiliac

Tuesday, May 6th:  Bound by Words

Tuesday, May 6th:  Mandy Boles – Life Between Books

Wednesday, May 7th:  No More Grumpy Bookseller

Thursday, May 8th:  BookNAround

Friday, May 9th:  In Bed With Books

A Star For Mrs. Blake by April Smith

A Star For Mrs. Blake by April Smith
Published by Knopf, ISBN 978-0-307-95884-6
Hardcover, $25.95, 352 pages

As a young child in the late 60s- early 70s, I can remember walking to school and passing by a house that had a gold star in the window. When I asked my mom what that meant, she told me that the woman who lived in that house lost a son in the war. It always made me sad thinking about that mom and her son.

April Smith's new historical novel, A Star For Mrs. Blake, tells the story of Cora Blake, a woman who lost her only son in battle in France during WWI. She has had a tough existence since then, losing her mother and sister, and moving in with her brother-in-law to care for him and his three daughters.

The Great Depression has hit the coastal rural area of Maine particularly hard, and Cora scrapes by working occasionally at a fish canning manufacturer, difficult dirty work that pays little. Her saving grace is volunteering at the local library, which would not be open if not for Cora. She has a beau, a geologist who wants to marry her.

An opportunity arises where certain Gold Star mothers whose sons were buried overseas can go to France to visit their sons' graves, located in a big military cemetery. Cora jumps at the chance and in her small group are Katie, an Irish working woman who lost two sons, Minnie, a Jewish woman, Wilhemina, whom they discover spent time in an asylum, and Bobbie, a wealthy Boston socialite.

Lt. Tom Hammond is their military escort, along with Lily, a young nurse from Chicago. The women, who come from such different places, do not always get along and have more than a few skirmishes. Along the way, Cora meets Griffin Reed, a war journalist who was severely injured in battle and now has a tin mask covering part of his face and a morphine addiction. (Anyone who has watched HBO's Boardwalk Empire will understand about the mask, worn by WWI vet Richard Harrow in the show.)

Cora and Griffin become friends, perhaps because they both are hiding behind a disguise- Reed behind his mask and Cora behind a lie she has been living with for many years. I liked the growing relationship between these two people.

The women are taken from place to place in France, and soon strafe living under the military rules they have been forced to follow. Seeing these women who, once away from their husbands and families, become stronger and bond together is satisfying and learning more about their home situations is interesting.

There are some secrets discovered along the way, and I admit that I found at least one incident at the end of the book a little too soap opera for my taste, but overall I really enjoyed this book. The mixing of politics and military is also an intriguing aspect of this book.

Reading books based on historical facts interest me, and in the acknowledgements Smith shares her real life inspirations for her fascinating book. I had never heard about these Gold Star mother pilgrimages and will be looking for more information on them.

Fans of Sarah Blake's The Postmistress and Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone (who also had a protagonist named Cora) will find much to like here, with women who, once away from home, find something in themselves they may not have known existed.

rating 4 of 5

Thanks to TLC Tours for including me on this tour. The rest of April Smith's stops are here.

April Smith’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Sunday, January 12th:  Writer Unboxed  author guest post

Monday, January 13th:  BookNAround

Tuesday, January 14th:  A Bookish Affair

Wednesday, January 15th:  Cici’s Theories

Thursday, January 16th:  Bookchickdi

Monday, January 20th:  Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Tuesday, January 21st:  Drey’s Library

Wednesday, January 22nd:  Jorie Loves a Story

Monday, January 27th:  Book Snob

Monday, February 3rd:  Diary of an Eccentric

Tuesday, February 4th:  The Lost Entwife

Wednesday, February 5th:  Books and Movies

Tuesday, February 11th:  Savvy Verse and Wit

Wednesday, February 12th:  Library of Clean Reads

Monday, February 17th:  Reading Lark

Maeve Binchy's Last Book- A Week in Winter

A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

Published by Knopf ISBN 978-0307273574

Hardcover, $26.95, 336 pages

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Irish author Maeve Binchy came to the attention of American readers in the 1990s when one of her novels, “Circle of Friends”, was made into a popular movie.  Soon we were all reading her beautifully crafted books of middle-class Irish, usually from the rural areas of Ireland, who often moved to the big city looking for love and a career.

Binchy passed away last year at the age of 72, and her many worldwide fans were saddened to hear of the news. Many of her novels featured recurring characters and settings, and readers lost not only her, but those familiar friends as well.

Her last novel, “A Week in Winter”, is vintage Binchy at her best. We have a large cast of characters, each telling their own stories, as they come together to spend a week in a beautiful Irish hotel set on a dramatic cliffside in the small town of Stonybridge.

Chicky Starr is a young Irish lass living in Stonybridge with her family. She falls in love with Walter, a handsome young man traveling through Ireland who convinces her to leave her family and come with him to America.

Her family is dead set against her doing this, but Chicky is in love. They end up in New York City, but Walter is a wanderer and he soon leaves Chicky stranded alone in a foreign country.

Chicky finds a job and a home at a boarding house where she cooks and cleans. She is too embarrassed to tell her family what has happened to her, so she tells them that Walter and she were married, but he has died in a car crash.

Eventually she decides to go back home to Stonybridge, and with the money she has saved over the years buys a large Irish home and turns it into a hotel. Her family believes she will fail, but Queenie, the elderly woman who owns the castle-like home, casts her lot with Chicky and they begin to make it a reality.

Rigger was a young man born out of wedlock to Nuala, who left Stonybridge to work in Dublin. He fell in with a bad crowd and got into trouble. Nuala sent him to Stonybridge to work with Chicky, and there he changed his ways, fell in love and became Chicky’s right-hand man.

As the hotel prepares to open, we meet the first week’s guests. Each guest gets their own chapter to tell their own story, and this is vintage Binchy. We even see some characters from our favorite Binchy books, like the Signora from “Evening Class”, and some of our favorite places, such as Quentin’s restaurant and Whitethorn Woods, make cameos. It will bring a smile of recognition to regular Binchy readers.

There are many interesting stories here, including Winnie,’s, a thirty-something unmarried nurse. After giving up hope, she finds love with a wonderful man. The only problem with him: he has an unusually close relationship with his mother, Lillian.

Winnie tries to engage with Lillian, but it is clear that Lillian won’t approve of any woman her son dates. Winnie arranges for a romantic week away with her man, but it ends up he cannot go due to a work commitment, and suggests that Winnie takes his mother instead. It doesn’t look like a promising week.

Freda is a young librarian who loves her job but hasn’t been lucky in the love department. She meets a man whom her best friend and aunt have their doubts about, and soon Freda is abandoning her work and friends for this man. Freda also has a secret; she has visions of things to come.

There is a husband and wife doctor team who have seen some sad and troubling things and long to have a baby. An aging American actor is (he thinks) incognito, but everyone recognizes him. An older couple who spends their free time entering sweepstakes wish they had won the first place trip to Paris instead of the second prize of a trip to Ireland. A hard-working Swedish man loves music and has doubts about taking over his father’s business.

All of these people converge at Chicky’s hotel for a week in winter. We get to know them- their longings, their fears, their hopes, their sadness, and their joys. Binchy is a master at showing us their humanity and making us care about them. The reader identifies with something about each of them.

Binchy tells universal stories about people we know, people we are. They strive to have better lives, work hard and long for true love. She sets these stories in her beloved Ireland, and we learn a little bit about life in the Emerald Isle.

If you are a fan of Maeve Binchy, “A Week in Winter” is not to be missed, even though she most certainly will be.

Rating 5 of 5 stars

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger
Published by Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 9780307268846
Hardcover, $25.95, 352 pages

I was drawn to this book because it was about a Bangladeshi woman who marries an American man and moves to Rochester, NY, and I'm originally from a city near there. The first reference to Wegmans grocery store in Pittsford made me smile wistfully. I enjoyed reading of Amina's journey from the only home she has known to marry a man she met on the Internet. She and her parents plan for Amina to marry, become an American citizen, and then bring them to live in America.

But George, Amina's husband, is not aware of these plans. He is an engineer, bought a home for Amina and himself, and wants to start a family. Their tentativeness in beginning a life together when they don't know each other very well is the most interesting part of the book. The story is told from Amina's point of view, so we don't get as much of George's side of things. He tries very hard to please to his wife, to make her feel welcome and loved, but he is a little rigid. We find that there is a secret he has been hiding, one that devastates Amina when she discovers it.

Watching Amina adjust to life in cold, snowy Rochester, trying to get a job, make friends and work towards her goal of bringing her parents over fascinated me. Freudenberger does a terrific job of putting the reader in Amina's shoes, of empathizing with her. You can actually feel her loneliness, and you root for her when she gets a job and goes to school. Like the immigrants who built this country, Amina desires to build a better life and is willing to work hard for it.

But Amina is not entirely noble, she has her flaws. When the story shifts to Bangladesh as Amina goes home to prepare to bring her parents back with her, we see a different side to her. She fears that something may go awry and her parents will be denied visas. After her discovery that George had lied to her about something important, she begins to question whether she belongs in America. She is attracted to a man from her past, and this confuses her. Her father is involved in a deal gone bad, and her mother is becoming somewhat erratic. Are her plans falling apart around her?

Freudenberger puts the reader in Amina's home country and reading about Bangladeshi traditions, foods, clothing and lifestyle intrigued me. Her writing and characters drew me into this engaging story of a marriage that leads to love.

rating 4 of 5

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
Published by Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 978-0307596857
Hardcover, $24.95

The characters in Girls in White Dresses are women on the verge of marriage. We meet Lauren, Mary and Isabella at college, and follow them through various vignettes as they meet and date guys- some good, some bad- on their way to adulthood and eventually, marriage and motherhood.

Their stories are told in alternating chapters, snapshots of their lives. Mary is a serious law student who, for some reason unbeknownst to her friends, only dates ugly guys. She graduates and works many hours at her job, crushing on her boss. 

Isabella is the baby of her family, looking for a job in publishing and a good guy to love. She has several semiserious relationships, but none that seem to give her what she wants. Is it her?

Lauren graduates from college, moves to New York, and ends up waitressing at a lousy restaurant, dating a scuzzy bartender. "This is not what Lauren went to college for. This was not where she was supposed to be. These were not the kind of people she was supposed to be around."

This book can be a bit of a downer. We see all of these women at their most vulnerable, emotional time in their 20s, when they are out in the cold world, trying to find a career, trying to find love. They work at lousy jobs, have tiny city apartments, and kiss a lot of frogs looking for a prince. They see their friends getting married, (one hilarious chapter deals with the many, many bridal showers they have to attend as bridesmaids for one of their friend's weddings) getting great jobs, moving to the suburbs, having children, and their journey to the same life seems fraught with trouble. One thing that sustains them is their friendship with each other.

At times there seemed to be too many extraneous characters, but when the author focused on her main characters, I felt compelled to keep turning the pages. Close really nails the confusion of young women, and most women who read this will identify with their lives, even if their 20s are in the rear view mirror.


rating 4 of 5 stars