🌟 This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell

I just loved this book!  I read one of Maggie O'Farrell's books a while ago (Instructions for a Heat Wave?) and remember liking it.  I can't rave enough about this one.

The story revolves around a couple (both previously married with other people's children) who are having some troubles.  Both are flawed individuals (who isn't?) and they don't always do well with each other.  But they do belong together (at least I thought so).

The characters are really well-drawn, but not overly so.  The reader is taken by surprise by some of their actions.

There are several themes explored: infertility, infidelity, eating disorders, abortion, and more.  Some are more fully explored than others.   But in the end, I loved the book and thought.....it would make a great movie!

Here is the synopsis from Westchester Library Systems:

Daniel Sullivan, a young American professor reeling from a failed marriage and a brutal custody battle, is on holiday in Ireland when he falls in love with Claudette, a world famous sexual icon and actress who fled fame for a reclusive life in a rural village. Together, they make an idyllic life in the country, raising two more children in blissful seclusion until a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. What follows is a journey through Daniel's many lives told in his voice and the voices of those who have made him the man he is: the American son and daughter he has not seen for many years; the family he has made with Claudette; and irrepressible, irreverent Claudette herself. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is a powerful rumination on the nature of identity, and the complexities of loyalty and devotion a gripping story of an extraordinary family and an extraordinary love.

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

I wanted to like this book more than I did.  It was on a lot of "best" lists for 2019. But the characters were just not drawn as deeply as I would have liked. Maybe it's a result of just having read Olive Again. Elizabeth Strout knows how to depict characters who are not in the least bit "stereotypical." They are unpredictable, complex human beings; you don't know quite what they are going to do or say.  In Mrs Everything, I felt that the characters were too predictable. I liked them all and had empathy but they were just not rich and distinct personalities for me. There were great issues brought to light in this book, for sure. So I commend Jennifer Weiner, who has a huge readership, for bringing these issues to so many readers.
Here is the Kirkus Review:

Jo and Bethie Kaufman may be sisters, but they don’t have much else in common. As young girls in the 1950s, Jo is a tomboy who’s uninterested in clothes while Bethie is the “pretty one” who loves to dress up. When their father dies unexpectedly, the Kaufman daughters and their mother, Sarah, suddenly have to learn how to take care of themselves at a time when women have few options. Jo, who realizes early on that she’s attracted to girls, knows that it will be difficult for her to ever truly be herself in a world that doesn’t understand her. Meanwhile, Bethie struggles with her appearance, using food to handle her difficult emotions. The names Jo and Beth aren’t all that Weiner (Hungry Heart, 2016, etc.) borrows from Little Women; she also uses a similar episodic structure to showcase important moments of the sisters’ lives as she follows them from girlhood to old age. They experience the civil rights movement, protests, sexual assault, drugs, sex, and marriage, all while dealing with their own personal demons. Although men are present in both women's lives, female relationships take center stage. Jo and Bethie are defined not by their relationships with husbands or boyfriends, but by their complex and challenging relationships with their mother, daughters, friends, lovers, and, ultimately, each other. Weiner resists giving either sister an easy, tidy ending; their sorrows are the kind that many women, especially those of their generation, have had to face. The story ends as Hillary Clinton runs for president, a poignant reminder of both the strides women have made since the 1950s and the barriers that still hold them back.
An ambitious look at how women’s roles have changed—and stayed the same—over the last 70 years.

Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout

Another beautiful book by Strout.  I think I first read her with Amy and Isabel, a book I want to revisit.  It will be interesting to see how her talent has grown and changed.
We read this for Book Club (#1 Club) and everyone was so enamored with Olive and with the book. We had great conversations about the characters, the stories and so much more.
Highly recommended!

The Body in Question by Jill Climent

Really enjoyed this book - a page turner for sure.

The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial involving a rich, white teenage girl - a twin - on trial for the horrific murder of her toddler brother, and the sequestered jury deciding her fate.  Two of the jurors sequestered (she, Juror C-2; he, F-17), holed up at the Econo-Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime and its surrounding facts are revealed during a string of days and seemingly endless court hours, the nights, playing out in a series of court-financed meals Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath, as jurors, never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn they are on opposing sides of the case and realize that their fellow jurors are wise to their affair. After the trial's end, as Hannah returns home to her much older, now, suddenly, frail husband (they married when she was 24; he, 58) an exploding media fury involving the case catches them all up in a frenzy of public outrage at a jury that seems to have convicted the wrong twin, and a judge who has received an anonymous handwritten letter about a series of sexual encounters ("I feel it is my duty as a juror and a citizen to report that two of my fellow jurors had sexual contact on more than seven occasions during our nights at the motel..."), calling into question their respective verdicts, and announcing she is releasing the jurors' names to the media. Hannah's "one last dalliance before she is too old" takes on profoundly personal and moral consequences, as the novel moves to its affecting, powerful and surprising conclusion.

The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman

I read this book in less than a week.....I had to because it was a 7-day book, but I also enjoyed it and wanted to dive in and be absorbed by a Hoffman book. Have not read one in a while. This did not disappoint!
From GoodReads:
In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

🌟 The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Just read this for my 2nd book club and really enjoyed it.  It's a bit different for Patchett, I think and I heard her interviewed on the radio and heard her discuss how she hasn't done "evil or bad characters."  So that was a goal for this book.
Here's the opener for the NPR review:

Patchett's eighth novel is a paradise lost tale dusted with a sprinkling of Cinderella, The Little Princess and Hansel and Gretel. Two siblings, Maeve and Danny Conroy, bond tightly after their mother leaves home when they're 10 and 3. Home is the eponymous Dutch House, a 1922 mansion outside Philadelphia that their father, Cyril, a real estate mogul, bought fully furnished in an estate sale as a surprise for his wife in 1946, when Maeve was 5. The house, built by a Dutch couple who made their fortune in cigarettes, is grand, with an ornate dining room ceiling, six bedrooms on the second floor, and a ballroom on the third floor. His wife, Elna, hates it, aesthetically and ethically. After she flees, ostensibly to India to devote herself to the poor, her family suffers, as if "they had all become characters in the worst part of a fairy tale," Patchett writes.

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

This is a very different kind of book for me....so I am glad that my book club chose it.  I really enjoyed it.  This is a family saga about a Mexican-American family - BIG family, and their relationaships, struggles, successes and more. Here, from Westchester Library System, is a great summary:

"In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home"--

The Need by Helen Phillips

"Motherhood Is Scary and Crazy and Darkly Comic. So Is This Novel About It." This is the headline title of the NY Times book review about this book and it nails it - right on.

It's a really interesting book - half sci-fi, half horror, but in the end, it's apart a woman's quest to find herself. She has fantasies and nightmares and can't figure out what's real and what's imagined. But her life seems to be unraveling.

The issues are issues that I imagine many working moms deal with, but they deal better than Molly. But who knows? How many are terrorized by these conflicting feelings?

It's powerful and strange and not like many books I have read. I really recommend it. But it's not "light."

The Times review points out that readers who are NOT moms, or parents, may not get it and may have no sympathy for Molly. I get that.....but they should try to read it and understand it

The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz

This is one of my favorite books of the year so far, and I have read a lot of books!  I had heard about it a while ago but never reserved it. So glad I went back to my want to read list and found it. Right up my alley, of course, dealing with Russian history.
It is a fictionalized account of Svetlana Alliluyeva's life as a Soviet defector, mother, daughter, wife and troubled person. And I can certainly understand why after reading this book. It makes me want to read more about her.
It's a great story, most of it true (the author's father is the person who met her in Zurich for her defection), but the author adds some romance to the story. Probably thought that people wouldn't be so interested without it.
The Washinton Post's reviewer says, "“The Red Daughter” is a meditative novel about regret, trauma and the unenviable fate of history’s castoffs." So true.
This is a great review. so if you are interested in this book, read this and you will be compelled to read it!

Conversations with Friends (Take Two) by Sally Rooney

I re-read this book as it's the choice for my book club in October. I welcomed the chance to read it again because I recall not loving it the first time, but really liking her next book, Normal People.

So I read it again and liked it more but I still can't say it is at the top of my list.  But Normal People still is.

I read it more carefully, more observant of the characters (mainly Frances) and trying to like her more.  And understand her more and I can say that I do with the second reading.

The Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

I heard a podcast interview with Laura Lippman and knew I would love this book, And I did! I never read any of her novels before and she has written SO many books, mostly crime novels. But this is so much more than a crime novel. It's a statement on race in America, a psychological study, a great story. I can't say enough and I want to read more and more of Laura Lippman!
Read what the KING of crime says (Stephen King!) in this review in the NY Times.:

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Anyone who knows me, knows that I would love this book. It's a fictionalized account of the publication of Boris Pasternack's book Dr. Zhivago. I can honestly say that I had no idea about any of this and was totally immersed in the story. The writing is good, but the story is everything.
I didn't want it to end, but couldn't wait til the end to see how it all finished up.
As soon as I finished, I went to barnes and Noble and bought the book, Dr. Zhivago

Chances Are by Richard Russo

Why haven't I read Richard Russo before? I have no idea, but now I want more!
This is the story of three 66 year old guys, friends as college students years ago, who come together on Martha's Vineyard to reconnect. And to talk about the mystery of what happened to Jacy, the girl they were all in love with back then.
The story of Jacy seemed a bit contorted and "soap opera-ish" to me but that doesn't mean I wasn't drawn right into it!
The beauty of the book for me was the character depiction: 3 very different men, all drawn distinctly and beautifully. You feel like you know them.
After I started to get to know them, chapter by chapter (each chapter is the name of one of the men) as he draws them, I wanted to go back and reread previous chapters. When done with the book, I wanted to start it all over again.
But, it was a 7 day book and at $.50 a day, I didn't do it. Besides, my next book was waiting.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Since I heard about this book coming out, I have wanted to read it.  "The Signature of All Things" is one my favorite books of the last decade so I was ready for more Elizabeth Gilbert.  What a different book this is!

I can't say I didn't enjoy it (double negative!) but I do acknowledge that is it NOT "Signature" which was interesting, different and bold.  This book is somewhat trite, I felt, but underneath there is a message - and it's one not too far from the one in "Signature."  There are similar themes in these books.

Here, from the NYTimes Book Review:

Paradoxically, this open-endedness, this refusal of received literary templates, is what makes “City of Girls” worth reading. It’s not a simple-minded polemic about sexual freedom and not an operatic downer; rather, it’s the story of a conflicted, solitary woman who’s made an independent life as best she can. If the usual narrative shapes don’t fit her experience — and they don’t fit most lives — neither she nor her creator seems to be worrying about it.

I do recommend it, if you are a Gilbert fan.  Interesting..... I have NOT read her most "famous" one, "Eat Pray Love."
I guess I should give it a go.

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

I heard Dani Shapiro interviewed in the NY Times Book podcast and just HAD to read the book. Actually, I took it out as an audio book and was able to hear it read by Dani herself.

This is a fascinating memoir about a woman, the author herself, a early 50's married author with one son, a Sephardic Jew with a long line of Jews in her lineage.  She decides, on a whim, to do a DNA test (Ancestry.com or one of those) and finds out her father is not really her father.

Such a shock to her, but in the back of her mind, she has always felt that something is "not right." She is a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl with no a single relative she resembles in any way.

I will not reveal what she learns, and what she learns about herself, through this revelation, but it's a fabulous book and a gripping memoir.

I highly recommend it!

From GoodReads:

The acclaimed and beloved author of Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets—a real-time exploration of the staggering discovery she recently made about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden story of her own life

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Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Heard a lot about this book and was very excited to read it. I have to say that I started out lukewarm about it. I kept at it, however, and am SO glad that I did.  The final part of the book really nailed it all and put the whole thing in perspective.
This is a book about the challenges of marriage, the challenges of being female in a male world and the challenges of being human and a product of our upbringing.
The book was funny but also very poignant and touching, especially the final part (the shortest part, but the most challenging to read.  Each sentence held such insight and meaning. I want to meet and talk to Taffy. She is brilliant!

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

"Alicia Berenson is a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, living in a posh area of London. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late. Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word."

This is a psychological thriller that did not really thrill me. It was gripping at the beginning but the ending left me cold.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Not sure how I heard about this book - probably a podcast - but I am sure glad I read it.

It is a novel full of empathy and pain, hurt and anger, but at the root is mental illness - which is not dealt with until it's too late. The book spans four decades and describes two neighboring families in Westchester (I am assuming) who strike up a friendship and have that broken by tragegy.

I must say that I thought the final fourth of the book could have been condensed a bit, but then I ask myself if it would have been at the expense of the character development.

In any event, I loved reading it, was totally caught up in the lives of these people and appreciated how they eveolved over time.

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

Amazing book!
Can't say enough about it. Takes place in a very interesting location, too.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

I absolutely loved this book!  The depth of the writing, in expressing the two main characters and who they are is brilliant. They change, evolve in interesting ways, interact with each other in sometimes strange, but powerful connections.
I savored the writing, read paragraphs two and three times, pondered over how it would end.
I am not telling any more. Just READ IT!

Great quote from NPR:

Normal People is a compulsive, psychologically astute will-they-or-won't-they love story involving two of the most sympathetic people you're liable to meet between covers. Although hailed as a voice of millennials, Rooney offers plenty to appeal to readers across genders and generations.

🌟 The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

LOVED this sad and touching book.  Takes place in two time spans:  1980s during AIDS crisis in Chicago and then 30 years later. Most of the men from the first part of the book have died.
Took me back to that time in NY but how I was so removed from it....being a busy new mom.  I feel that I was so insulated from reality when I think back on those days of young motherhood.

This is a terrific book.  It made me cry at the end and I don't cry too much when reading. Michael Cunningham writes in his NY Times book review:

The novel tells, in alternating chapters, about a group of friends, most of them gay men, in Chicago in the mid-to-late 1980s, and about a woman in 2015 who has gone to Paris in search of her estranged daughter. I’m afraid the very phrase “a group of friends, most of them gay men” immediately implies the nature of the mortality that’s central to the book. “The Great Believers” is, as far as I know, among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the present — among the first, that is, to convey the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years as well as its course and its repercussions over the decades. Makkai puts the epidemic (which, of course, has not yet ended) into historical perspective without distancing it or blunting its horrors.

Improvement by Joan Silber

I had never heard of this author but was drawn to the book by it's recommendation in the Three Lives Bookstore in the Village.  So I bought it, always wanting to support the local, independent bookstores.  This quote from Kirkus, is pretty much what the "blurb" in the bookstore said about the book:

There is something so refreshing and genuine about this book, coming partly from the bumpy weave of its unpredictable story and partly from its sharply turned yet refreshingly unmannered prose. A winner.

I'm glad I own the book, because as soon as I finished it, I wanted to start it all over again, with the added insight of having just finished it. I can't explain it....I rarely feel that way about a book, but this one was short and doable.

But alas, Susan Choi's new book, Trust Exercise, is awaiting and I've waited a while to get it from the Library. So, I'll move on with the knowledge that I can go back to Silber's book whenever I want. It's on the shelf.

Good Riddance by Eleanor Lipman

Had a lot of fun reading this light book. Needed something light after Lost and Wanted and this did the trick. Here's what Kirkus says:

Daphne Maritch has no idea why her mother, a popular New Hampshire high school teacher, left her a heavily annotated yearbook for the class of 1968—but she's about to find out whether she wants to or not.
As Lipman's latest comic novel (On Turpentine Lane, 2017, etc.) opens, Daphne is attempting to declutter her apartment according to the principles of a bestselling book: Hold each item to your heart and ask "does this thing inspire joy?" Despite her mother's obsession with the class of '68—she was their teacher and yearbook adviser fresh out of college, then attended their reunions for decades—the answer with regard to their yearbook is a firm no, and she pitches the thing out. Unfortunately, one of the neighbors in her New York apartment building is both a dedicated trash-picker and an aspiring filmmaker. This neighbor lays claim to the yearbook, convinced that she can base a fascinating documentary on research into the fates of this group of 60-somethings. Daphne's belated attempts to derail the project, which seems to have the potential to reveal her dead mother's secrets, lead to all sorts of madcap adventures. She enlists another neighbor, a sexy young TV actor, in her efforts; she takes a trip to this year's reunion with the documentary filmmaker; she desperately tries to insulate her father, erstwhile principal of the same high school, now a widowed dog-walker in Manhattan, from the whole project and its revelations. It's pretty silly, and very contrived, but this author has a black belt in silly contrivance and a faithful horde of fans who are looking for just that. Au courant elements like an investigative podcast serial, the television show Riverdale, and online courses for becoming a chocolatier add a fresh twist to the proceedings.
Lipman's narrative brio keeps things moving at a good clip.

Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

Love this author. I struggled with the "physics" of the book (the protagonist is a physicist) and I think I missed some of the meaning of that profession in the context of the book. But no matter. Loved it. Reads well, interesting characters.  A great find.
Here's what Kirkus says:

A physicist at MIT receives a text from her dead best friend.
"In the first few months after Charlie died, I began hearing from her much more frequently," Helen Clapp explains at the outset of Freudenberger's (The Newlyweds, 2012, etc.) third novel. Charlie Boyce and Helen met freshman year at Harvard. Though they were "an upper-middle-class black girl from Brookline"—Charlie—"and a work-study white science nerd from Pasadena"—Helen—their friendship took flight, powered by in-jokes, catchphrases, shared ambitions, and theories about life. After graduation, Charlie moved to LA and became a screenwriter, married a surfer, had a little girl. Helen stayed in Boston and became famous as one of the authors of the Clapp-Jonnal model "for quark gluon plasma as a dual black hole in five-dimensional space-time." She wrote two bestselling science books and gained an endowed chair at MIT; her 7-year-old son, Jack, whose father was an anonymous sperm donor, became the "love of [her] life." As the novel begins, Charlie has just died of lupus. Though they hadn't spoken for over a year, Helen is now receiving texts from Charlie's cellphone, which her husband hasn't been able to find since she died. Strangely, they seem like they could only have been written by...Charlie? Meanwhile, said husband and daughter come to stay with Charlie's parents in Boston; also back in town is Neel Jonnal, Helen's college boyfriend and collaborator, now with a fiancee. Complications ensue, though not the predictable soap-opera ones you'd imagine. Freudenberger is good at explaining physics, but her real genius is in the depiction of relationships. Each one in the novel, whether between adults, adults and children, or among children, is unique, finely calibrated, and real. The title is a line from a poem by W.H. Auden which doesn't fully hit until the end of the book, when it takes on heart-rending poignancy.

Brimming with wit and intelligence and devoted to things that matter: life, love, death, and the mysteries of the cosmos

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

My Book Club chose this and I am really glad. I don't recall if I have ever read James Baldwin but I grew up seeing his books all the time. My mother was such a fan!
This was powerful, so prescient and upsetting. The love story was beautiful but oh, so sad. It is so sad that nothing much has changed over the course of 40+ years since it was written.

Bowlaway by Elizabeth Mc Cracken

For me, this started out strong but finished weak.  There were too many characters and too much "space" in between for me to link them together in the end. I think that this is a clever and endearing story, with really unusual characters, but somehow, I lost my keen interest as I moved along in the story.  Here is another take on the book, from BookBrowse:

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century - nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person - Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmark - with Bertha its most notable resident.

When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha's defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family's myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

One thing I will say about this book: I learned some new stuff! Fascinating story of the Molasses Factory explosion in Boston. So absurd that I figured the author made it up. NOPE! True story!

Away by Amy Bloom

Not sure why I have never read this author before, but was glad I checked out this book.  I'm being lazy now and quoting from Westchester Library System Review:

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom's work¿ her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart - come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

The characters she meets along the way are really great....and I loved the ending....truly was surprised by it, too.

I will read more Amy Bloom soon!

You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

This is a great collection of short stories from one of my favorite contemporary female authors. 
It's funny that I have not read her first novel, Prep, which really brought her career to attention.  I think I will try it!

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

This is a pretty amazing story and the book is based on a true story - hard to believe. But then again, the whole thing is hard to believe.
I loved the book but thought that the end was a little weak. Not sure why. It's a true story so I can't dispute the ending. I guess I expected the author to "jazz it up" a bit. And he didn't....which was the right thing to do.
Therefore, I don't understand my reaction!

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

This book was a little disappointing.  I did read it through to the end in a short time but in some ways, I felt it was a rather typical story of unrequited love.  Lucy and Gabe meet at Columbia University on Sept 11 and together witness the horror that occured that day.  They have a strong bond and a strong attraction to each other.  But Gabe is pulled toward his dream - of being a photojournalist, traveling the world and he follows his heart in that direction. Lucy is devastated and suffers, always loving Gabe.  But her life goes on and she marries, has children, etc. Then you can almost guess what happens.  That is why I was disappointed in the book. It was predictable.  Kirkus gave it a star.... I was surprised.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

This book is a HUGE hit and I put it on my digital hold list at the Library and it appeared way before I thought it would…..that's because they have obtained so many copies to keep up with the demand.
I can see why it's so popular; great story, interesting characters, quick read.
I recall a couple of "Southern" books like this that I loved: Bastard Out of Carolina, Ellen Foster and Charms for the Easy Life. Makes me want to read these again!
Here is a good synopsis from LitLovers website

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl.

But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder.

Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

I do recommend this book but don't know if I feel it is worth all the attention it is getting. I think that Reese Witherspoon's Book Club endorsement has really pushed it into the limelight.

The NYTimes says this:

A painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature…. Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders—and dangers—of her private world.

And yes, the descriptions of living in the marsh alone are quite amazing.....not sure anyone could really do what Kya does in this book.  

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Mosfegh

I had heard so much about this book for quite some time so I grabbed it when it was available at the Croton Library.  I read it quickly but I can't use the word "enjoy." The main character was so dysfunctional that I found it hard to like her or even feel much empathy.  I ask myself why.  I am not sure I have the answer,
I just finished A Ladder to the Sky about an amazingly horrid person, but somehow, that was tongue-in-cheek, or ironic. At least to me. (My husband is reading the Boyne book now and is so disturbed by the characters in Ladder to the Sk".).
Goes to show that reading is very subjective - obviously.  It does stir my curiosity; I ask myself why could I read the Boyne book and NOT hate the characters, but read another book about a person who I SHOULD sympathize with, but I don't.
I am glad that I read it and I think I will try another of her novels.  I just read a review in The Guardian that helps me understand Moshfegh a little better.  I'll give her another chance and read Eileen.

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

I just LOVED this book! It is the third book from John Boyne that I have read and I have not been disappointed in any of them.  This one was very different. So smart, clever and surprising!  It's a bit of a page-turner.
This is a book about writers, specifically, novelists, and I loved that aspect of it.  John Boyne is a fabulous writer but I am sure he grapples with the issues in this book.  So he writes a novel about a truly despicable novelist and he makes you HATE him. But I don't know that John Boyne really hates him. He explains his behavior from the point of view of another novelist.
The plot is so good, there are twists and turns and Boyne combines fictional and "real" writers in the story, having them interact with each other in such interesting ways. I began to wonder who was the "real" author and who was fictional.
The Washington Post review of this book is great.  Here is a link to that.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

I could not wait to get this book and read it but I have to say that I was a bit disappointed.  Maybe I read too much about it before the fact.
It was so timely, relevant, had characters that reminded me of my own children, and I loved Willa, the main character. But there was just something that did not pull me in.  I struggled to get through some chapters.  I can't really explain it. I did tell my husband to read it after I was done. Let's see what he says.

Brother by David Chariandy

Not sure on which list I found this book, but certainly glad that I did. A short, powerful story about race, prejudice, stolen ambitions, etc.  It's told from the point of view of a young man who lost his brother, tragically, from a policeman's bullet.  Quite prescient today.  The story takes place in Toronto, however, which gives us a different perspective. I think we idealize our neighbors to the north sometimes.
Beautifully written prose, a haunting book.

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

Not a book for working moms with a nanny!  It's terrifying....and based on that true story of a nanny in NYC who murdered the kids.  I remember that so well.
The book must be critiqued then by its style, its language, the way it builds the character of Louise, this "perfect nanny" who we try to understand.
I can see why it's such a best seller, and I can also see why it won a big award in France when it was released.
But would I recommend it to a young mom with a nanny?  NO!