Friday 5ive- August 27, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post featuring five things that caught my eye this week. The Friday 5ive took last week for a mini-vacation.

1)  Can you believe August is almost over? Why does summer go by so fast? I love summer, but my youngest sister loves autumn and can't wait for it to begin so she can have her pumpkin spice latte. Our brother made her a board for her "Coffee Corner" at her house. I'm always impressed by anyone with artistic skill (as I lack it). 

2) We traveled to Boston last weekend to visit our youngest son. He took us to his golf club, Granite Hills Links in Quincy, for lunch and the view there is incredible. You can golf while overlooking the skyline of Boston as seen in this photo. Apparently the club is one of the most popular wedding venues in Massachusetts and there was a wedding and a bridal shower there on the day we visited.

3) While the guys golfed, the gals spent the day at Nantasket Beach in Hull, and while walking the beach we came across a large group of young children talking surfing lessons. It was fun to watch them get up on their boards.  

4) Speaking of different seasons, I watched the Christmas episode of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ and it was so delightful. If it didn't put a smile on your face, you are truly a Grinch. I particularly enjoyed the homage to my favorite Christmas movie, Love, Actually. Whenever I am feeling down or losing faith in humanity, I will play this episode. 

5) As I spent time in airports and on planes, I was able to read uninterrupted.  First up was Kristin van Ogtrop's memoir Did I Say That Out Loud-Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them. Ogtrop, was the former editor of Real Simple magazine, and her essays on such things as her climb up the corporate ladder from joy to agony as magazines folded up publication, to the time she nearly died from accidentally swallowing a plastic fork tine, to the vacation home her family bought with her sister's family will have you laughing and crying. It makes a good pairing with Sara Arnell's midlife crisis book from a few weeks ago, There Will Be Lobster. While I've been reading books about midlife crisis, I don't think I'm in one. (right?) 

Laura Dave's suspense novel, The Last Thing He Told Me, tops the bestseller list and I can see why. When Hannah receives a note from Owen, her husband of one year, reading "Protect her", she is totally unprepared for what is ahead of her. Her husband has disappeared after the company he works for is raided by the SEC and FBI and the head of the company is arrested. What happens next as Hannah attempts to keep her 16 year-old stepdaughter safe and unravel Owen's true identity kept me frantically turning the pages. Dave has written a few other books, but not suspense novels like this. I think she has found her genre and this is scheduled to be a limited series on Apple TV+ with Julia Roberts. 

I also read a psychological thriller, Where I Left Her, by Amber Garza, about a parent's worst nightmare. Whitney drops off her 16 year-old daughter Amelia at a sleepover with her new friend Lauren. When Whitney returns to pick Amelia up the next day, an elderly woman answers the door and says that no one named Lauren lives there, Whitney agonizes over what happened to her daughter. Like The Last Thing He Told Me, this book keeps you turning the pages, and the ending twist is a shocker. My full review is here. 

We seem to be going backwards with COVID, so please wear a mask, wash your hands, stay socially distant and get a vaccine. It's the best way to keep each other, especially young children who can't get a vaccine yet, safe.

Road Trip- Summer With Robin in Rhode Island

I'm lucky that living in New York City allows me the opportunity to attend many book signings, talks, and sometimes, book launch parties. Last week I made a road trip to Rhode Island to visit my sister-in-law (who also loves books) to attend Summer With Robin at the Quidnessett Country Club.

A view from the Quidnessett Counrty Club

The setting is beautiful, and it was a perfect evening for book fun. We started the day wandering around Newport, my first trip there. It's such a lovely place! We walked around the wharf, had a delicious lunch at 22 Bowen's, splitting a burger and some polenta fries, and we each had a Kiwi Burst, a refreshing cocktail of rum, pineapple vodka, kiwi and mint.

After visiting the quaint little shops (the Newport Mansions Store on Bannister Wharf is a must-stop), we headed over to the country club. We had VIP tickets, which entitled us to a cocktail hour, with passed appetizers and a pasta station, and an opportunity to meet the authors and have our books signed.

The sold-out event was filled with mostly women, all readers, many of whom have attended this event annually. Robin introduced each author and gave them a few minutes to give a short overview and read from their books.

Robin Kall with her sister and the authors

Jillian Cantor's novel, The Lost Letter, is an historical novel set in two time periods. The first is 1938 Austria during the German occupation, featuring a stamp engraver apprentice.

The Lost Letter

The second time period is 1989, when Katie has to move her father to an Alzheimer's care unit and has his stamp collection appraised. The appraiser finds an unusual stamp, and that ties the two time periods together. It's a story that features family, strong women, and the Jewish resistance.

Angelica Baker's Our Little Racket is a debut novel set in 2008 in Greenwich Connecticut, about the aftermath of the failure of large bank, and how the failure affects five women involved with the bank's CEO, who faces accusations of wrongdoing.

Our Little Racket

Laura Dave, whose last novel 800 Grapes was a bestseller, is back with Hello, Sunshine, a modern tale about the role of social media in our lives. Her protagonist is a successful YouTube personality who has managed to work her way into a Food Network TV show. When she is hacked, it comes out that she is a fraud. The book has already been optioned for a movie, with Dave's screenwriter husband, Josh Singer (Spotlight) writing the screenplay.

Hello Sunshine

Kall asked the women what their inspiration was, and Baker said that when her writing was going poorly, and she started to read about the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapses, which she was unfamiliar with. She said she can read fiction when she writes.

Cantor can't read historical fiction when she writes. She didn't know anything about stamps when she started, and her agent suggested the topic to her. During a visit to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, she was fascinated by the Resistance exhibit, and the fact that many were so young was impressive.

Her character Elena was inspired by a woman in the exhibit. Cantor created a Pinterest board with items about stamps, the Resistance, and Kristallnacht that helped her with research. She spoke of the ordinary people who lived in extraordinary times.

Dave was intrigued by the Sony hack, it made her wonder whose life when put under a microscope would look pure, and took her story from there. She immersed herself in the Food Network and food bloggers to get the look and feel for her character.

She mentioned something that the audience found interesting. She spoke about a marriage researcher who said she could tell what makes a marriage work. If the couple used the word "we" rather than "I', they would make it. You could hear the wheels turning as the audience all considered what word they used. Dave made the audience laugh when she said she now says "We're annoyed at you" when talking to her husband.

The writers talked about eavesdropping on others' conversations (at restaurants, on subways), the publishers asking them to be active on social media, Skyping with book clubs (they like it), and situations they won't use (most having to do with immediate family).

Dave spoke about spilling water on her computer and losing 200 pages of a novel. She was sad for a day, but then bucked up and started again. That led to a discussion about the importance of emailing the manuscript to yourself as you go along.

Kall finished up by asking my favorite question- what are you reading?- to the authors. Cantor raved about Georgia Hunter's We Were The Lucky Ones, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Sarah Dunn's The Arrangement and an older nonfiction book, Erik Lawson's In The Garden of the Beasts.

Baker is reading Julia Buntin's Marlena, Stephen Florida, The Epiphany Machine, and Britt Bennett's The Mothers.

Dave had five books on her list: James Hansen's First Man, (which is also a movie written by her husband starring Ryan Gosling as astronaut Neil Armstrong), J. Courtney Sullivan's Saints For All Occasions, Matt Klam's Who Is Rich?, and two older books, Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys and Isabel Gilles' memoir It Happens Every Day.

Robin had delicious cookies for all of us on our way out, and it was the perfect ending to an informative and interesting evening. You can find out more Reading With Robin's events here.

Five Books Featuring Women At A Crossroads

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Novels that feature women facing a crossroads in their lives make for interesting stories, and this month I have five good ones to review.

Michelle Huneven follows up her last deeply moving novel, “Blame,” about a woman who spends time in prison after killing a mother and her young daughter while driving drunk, with another brilliant book, “Off Course.” In 1981 we meet Cressida, who has come to stay in her parent’s rustic cabin in the California Sierra Mountains. 

Off Course

Cressida is there to finish to her dissertation in economics, but malaise sets in and she ends up falling in love with a married man. She loses her way, and can’t find her footing in either love or her career. Huneven excels in creating unforgettable characters, and I found myself thinking about Cressida months after finishing this astonishing novel. I also loved the setting of this isolated mountain community.

Laura Dave’s novel “Eight Hundred Grapes” is also set in California, in the wine country of Sonoma. We meet Georgia, wearing her wedding dress and driving from L.A. to her family’s vineyard nine hours away. She has just found out that her fiancé has a young daughter he has not told her about.

Eight Hundred Grapes

She runs home to find that her brothers have a serious issue between them, her mother is dating another man and her father is selling the vineyards he has put his whole life into to a hated corporate entity.  

Georgia’s fiance follows to convince her that he loves and wants to marry her. Meeting his lovely daughter gives Georgia something to think about, as does meeting the girl’s mother, a hot British actress who wants to rekindle the flame.

Learning about running a vineyard and harvesting the grapes was extremely interesting, especially as there are so many in our area. And I liked that we weren’t really sure what Georgia would decide to do until the very end.

Melissa DeCarlo’s debut novel, “The Art of Crash Landing,” starts off strong, as 30-year-old Mattie finds herself pregnant and homeless after she leaves her boyfriend. She gets a letter from a lawyer telling her that she has an inheritance from her grandmother. She heads to the small town of Grandy, Oklahoma, where she finds out things about her dead mother that she didn’t know, including why her mother left home suddenly at 17.

The Art of Crash Landing

I especially enjoyed the small-town feel of this novel, getting to know the Grandy residents, like the librarian, her snarky niece and the wheelchair-bound lawyer who help (and hinder) Mattie in her quest. The humor and humanity shine through in this delightful debut. 

Patricia Park’s “Re Jane” takes us into the world of Jane Re, a Korean-American who lives with her uncle’s family in Queens, where she works at their small grocery store. Jane’s mother died when she was young and her father was an American soldier she never knew.

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Feeling like an outsider in her family (being only half-Korean and not looking like everyone else, and treated like Cinderella), Jane gets a job working for a Brooklyn family as a nanny to their adopted Chinese daughter, and finds herself drawn to the father.

Re Jane

Jane runs away to South Korea, where she ends up with her mother’s family and gets a job teaching English. She loves spending time with her aunt and even finds a great boyfriend, but Jane still doesn’t feel like she completely belongs in South Korea. Will she stay or return to America?

Park does an amazing job dropping us into these disparate worlds of Korean-American Queens, yuppie Brooklyn and South Korea. Her complicated relationship with her uncle is so well-done, and just when you think he doesn’t care about Jane, he shows another side. 

“Re Jane” is a clever retelling of “Jane Eyre,” and I recommend it to anyone who loved that story.

Stephanie Clifford’s “Everybody Rise” has an Edith Wharton-type quality to it. Evelyn has been raised by her mother to want to be a part of high society, something she herself could not attain. She sends Evelyn to a fancy private school in the hopes that Evelyn will impress the “right people.” 

Everybody Rise

Although Evelyn initially rejects her mother’s attempts, she is seduced by the lifestyle and finds herself falling deeper into debt as she works hard to become one of the “beautiful people” with disastrous results. Evelyn is not a character you always root for, but she sure is intriguing. “Everybody Rise” is one of the best novels of the year.

If you read

“Off Course”: B+

“Eight Hundred Grapes”: B+

“The Art of Crash Landing”: A-

“Re Jane”: A-

“Everybody Rise”: A