Escape Winter Through These Two Books

Reprinted from the Citizen.

It’s been a long, dreary winter and while many of us can’t physically escape the cold climate, our minds can venture to another location through the miracle of books. This month’s Book Report takes you away to other lands through two novels.

For those of us who long to go someplace faraway and warm, Delia Ephron’s “Siracusa” takes the reader along on a vacation with two couples to the beautiful town of Siracusa, located on the Italian island of Sicily. 

Lizzie and Michael seem to be a great couple. Michael is a Pulitzer prize-winning author who is is having trouble with his latest novel, and hopes that he will find inspiration on this trip. Lizzie wants to visit Siracusa because her late father has told her wonderful stories of a beautiful place.

Finn and Taylor are the other couple, who have brought their ten-year-old daughter Snow along. Finn and Lizzie used to be a couple a long time ago, and if the idea of traveling overseas with your ex and their spouse seems like a bad idea, well, it probably is.

Taylor is very controlling, the kind of person who plans a trip down to the very last detail, leaving nothing to chance. She tries to control everything in Snow’s life as well.

Finn is more free-wheeling, a restauranteur who often goes off on his own to find a great little out-of-the-way dive bar. He begins to resent Taylor and her need to control everything.

Michael enchants young Snow with his wild storytelling. He is having an affair with a young waitress at his favorite restaurant back home, and she is beginning to become more possessive and demanding of Michael.

The description of the scenery of Rome and Siracusa is so vivid, you can almost smell the sea air as you read. There are lots of great food scenes, and your sense of taste is engaged in the novel as well.

Something bad happens in Siracusa, and as the truth unravels, so do the marriages of the two couples. We see the story from the viewpoints of the characters, as they each take turns narrating. 

“Siracusa” is a seductive story, and you’ll find yourself lost in the story and scenery of this terrific book. I highly recommend it.

Jenny Colgan takes us to a small town in Scotland in “The Bookshop on the Corner”. Nina works as a librarian in the big city, until the day that her library is closed to make way for a “media center”. 

With no job, and a roommate who insists that Nina must get rid of all of the hundreds of books that are overtaking their apartment, Nina despairs of what come next in her life. Books are her life, her friends, the one thing that brings her joy.

Nina sees an ad for a big van and comes up with the idea of running a mobile bookshop. She has enough books to start an inventory, and with so many libraries closing, she has access to many more.

She heads up to a remote town in Scotland, and meets with the man selling the van at the local pub. It’s much bigger than she thought, and the owner scoffs at Nina, refusing to sell the van to her. 

The men who own the pub like Nina’s idea because their library closed a few years ago and there is no bookshop in town. They buy the van and call Nina to tell her the good news. They are crestfallen when Nina says that she is buying the van to sell books in her city, not in their small village.

But when Nina discovers that her van is too big for the city and she can’t get a permit, she reluctantly moves to the small village, only until she can figure something else out.

She finds a beautiful place to rent from a recently divorced farmer, and slowly makes friends. Nina loves pairing people with books she knows they will enjoy, and soon she becomes a big part of this remote town. But will she find love with the Eastern European train engineer or the brooding farmer landlord?

“The Bookshop on the Corner” is a lovely, light read that drops the reader into this remote part of Scotland. It’s a beautiful place to visit for a few hours as you lose yourself in Nina’s story, and makes you long for small-town life. And if you are a book lover, this one is for you. I highly recommend it as well.

“Siracusa” by Delia Ephron A-

Published by Blue Rider Press

Hardcover, 304 pages, $26

“The Bookshop on the Corner” by Jenny Colgan A-

Published by William Morrow Paperbacks

Paperback, 368 pages, $14.99

Three Books By Funny People

I recently read three books by funny people: Comedian and actor Brad Garrett's (Robert from TV's Everybody Loves Raymond) When The Balls Drop, Adam Resnick's (a former writer for David Letterman's The Late Show) Will Not Attend, and comedienne and actress Ali Wentworth's Happily Ali After.

When the Balls Drop by Brad Garrett
Published by Gallery Books ISBN 9781476772905
Hardcover, $25, 288 pages

Brad Garrett's When The Balls Drop is a comic treatise on what it's like to be a 50-year-old man whose body is falling apart. It is clearly geared towards men of that age, and as a woman of that age, I am not the target audience. Garrett spends too much time complaining about his ex-wives and how much money he had to give them. For my taste, it was a little off-putting.

I most enjoyed his stories about growing up with funny with his interesting family, and opening up for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas. Garrett has had a long stand-up comedy career, and those chapters were fascinating to me. I think he has a whole other book about this area of his life.

He spent nine seasons as Robert, the much put-upon older brother in Everybody Loves Raymond, but he doesn't share many stories from those days, other than Marie Roberts, who played his mother, could drink everyone under the table, and Peter Boyle, who played his father, had a gas problem. Again, I would have liked more of this. The book has many bursts of just laugh-out-loud stuff, just like his I can't-believe-he-really-said-that stand-up act.

Will Not Attend by Adam Resnick
Published by Blue Rider Press ISBN 9780147516213
Trade paperback, $16, 272 pages

The premise of Adam Resnick's Will Not Attend is that he is very anti-social and would much rather stay home than participate in any family dinner, much less go to Disney World with his nemesis, his wife's sister Diane, and her family.

Resnick's sister-in-law is one of those people who like to control everything, and Adam does not like to be told what to do and when to do it. Their epic blow-up in the middle of a Disney vacation where every slight was brought up was uncomfortable (though, I admit, kind of funny to see someone put in her place) to read, I can't imagine seeing it in person. After reading this, I was hoping that Diane was a purely made-up character because how he could have any relationship with her after this is unfathomable.

The language in the book is pretty rough at times, there is a lot of swearing here, so if you don't mind that, you may enjoy it. Again, I don't think I am the target audience for this book.


Happily Ali After by Ali Wentworth
Published by HarperCollins ISBN 9780062238498
Hardcover, $25.99, 240 pages

I read Ali Wentworth's first memoir Ali in Wonderland that hilariously dealt with her years trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood. Her very funny voice shone through each page. In her new book, Happily Ali After, Wentworth shares her adventures as a wife (to ABC newsman George Stephanopoulis) and mom to two young daughters.

I loved this Happily Ever After even more than Ali in Wonderland, probably because I can relate more to Ali the wife and mom than Ali the struggling actress. She tells great stories about trying to stay young-looking, her husband's poor driving, and her daughter's sex-education questions.

One of the stories that I most loved involved a trip the family had planned to Spain. Ali was in charge of making all the preparations, and when they got to the airport to take a late-night flight, they were told that the girls' passports had expired and they were going nowhere that night.

George was furious at Ali, and the girls went back and forth from one parent to the other asking if they were going to get a divorce. The car ride home was uncomfortable, and when they got home, Ali told George how so very sorry she was. As they lay in bed, he kissed her and told her he knew she she was sorry and that it was OK. Every couple has had that potentially huge fight, and could relate to this big oopsy that Ali committed.

Ali's story of a girl's weekend at a friend's California home with a psychic as entertainment was hilarious too. We all have our girlfriends, and her description of that party had me guffawing.

Reading Happily Ali After is like sitting in your funniest girlfriend's kitchen and listening to her crazy stories about her husband, her family, her job, her life. If I ever see her on the streets of NYC,  I will invite her over for a glass of wine just to hear her stories.