Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

While reading this book, I had no idea that it was inspired by a real event: a young boy was the lone survivor of a plane crash.  The author became obsessed with this event, especially since she has two sons. She needed to find a way to express her grief and perplexment. How was this one boy going to deal with the tragedy - an event that would undoubtedly color the rest of his life.

She does it well. I think I appreciated the book much more when I learned that it was prompted by this true story, and this was her way to deal with the reality of it.

The characters are well developed, and the story moves at a gripping pace.  The chapters alternate between what happens on the plane and what happens to Edward as he learns to navigate his new life.  This is from the New York Times review:

If the “before” chapters provide the book’s propulsive momentum, the “after” strand provides its psychological insight and resonance. Not only has Edward suffered the trauma of the crash and physical injuries, he’s lost everyone he loves. He enters what his therapist calls a “fugue state” in which he “tries to stay away from thoughts and emotions, as if they’re furniture he can skirt past in a room.” The only one who breaks through is his 12-year-old neighbor, Shay. “No one can hurt you ever again,” she tells him. “You already lost everything, right?” 

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

Not sure where I read about this book and the author, but she is now on my want to read list! Here is a synopsis of a very interesting book!  I felt that there was so much to discuss about this book and the characters and the decisions that they make.  

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind.

What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean’s last years and in her art.

With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeros in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.

Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most with passionate and resonance, this novel illuminating can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

She never disappoints, Curtis Sittenfeld! Except that I never read her first, "Prep." Now I have it from the library.  Will read soon.

I loved this book as a great summer read (but I would have enjoyed it anytime of the year.)  She delivers again. And I feel like it was a bit different for her.

The story is sweet and simple but with depth of character.  

From the NYTimes:

In “Romantic Comedy," we’re studying Sally Milz, a sketch writer for a weekly live comedy show called “The Night Owls,” similar to “Saturday Night Live” in both format and tone. She’s in her late 30s, white, divorced, funny but embittered by her life’s many little heartbreaks. When Sally’s friend and mediocre-looking colleague Danny Horst starts dating a very famous and incredibly hot actress, she writes a sketch for the show called “The Danny Horst Rule”: Men from “T.N.O.” can date way out of their league, but the same isn’t true for the women working on the show. (This seems like a bit of a Pete Davidson/Ariana Grande caricature, if only for when Danny comments on his fiancée’s Instagram post, “love u my moon girl.”)

Meanwhile, Noah Brewster — an aging pop icon — is hosting the show that week. Noah and Sally connect over a sketch idea he has, sparks fly and Sally then spends the rest of the book contemplating if someone like her (presumably plain-looking, at least in contrast to someone hot, rich and famous) can bag someone like him (hot, rich, famous).

Interesting how much she researched for this book, too.  SNL (TNO) is all over it!

The Bird Hotel by Joyce Maynard

This is one of my favorite authors, but this was not my favorite book of hers.  I did enjoy it, but it was a little too long for me, without a lot happening in the middle section.  I did like the conclusion, but it probably was a little predictable.

I feel like she added too many characters, all of them interesting, but not all of them really contributing that much to the story. I had to have a paper next to me where I wrote down their names and a little bit about them.  The characters would pop up again later and I was not sure who was who.

But I am glad that I read it.