A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I so looked forward to reading this book after the accolades bestowed upon it in the New York Times. I did enjoy its amazing prose, the clever and amusing writing and the story line. But I was not overwhelmed. And, of course, the fact that the author is a professor at my alma mater, U of Wisconsin, Madison made the book appealing. 

This is a coming of age story and a poignant and sad one. The main character, Tassie, is the daughter of a farmer. She is a student at the university in Troy, but I couldn't help but think it was really Madison. She gets a job as a nanny for a couple who is adopting a biracial baby. The story takes place very soon after 9/11, but the author does not really get around to that until late in the story, although it is alluded to earlier.

Her brother enlists in the army. His tragic end is crucial to the story. Tassie gets involved with a "Brazilian" who turns out to be not what she thought he was. There is a lot of that in this story. I won't give away more, but will just say that it's an engaging and very poignant story with long passages of beautiful prose, sometimes difficult to get through.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

As a liberal Democrat, would you expect me to read a fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bush????
This book was fabulous!!!! I really felt like I got to know this woman, Laura Bush, who in the book is Alice Lindgren, who marries Charles Blackwell (aka George W. Bush).
The writing is just wonderful. It's a page-turner and thoughtful and deep and rich in character development. And toward the end of the book, when she deals with being "the President's wife," Ms. Sittenfeld really writes from the heart and soul and you SWEAR that she IS the president's wife. It's so personal and real. I can't convey how I felt reading this part. I really liked this woman...wanted to meet her and get to know her.

I really would love to know how much of the character is based on the truth about Mrs. Bush. If she is really like the person in the book, I have to feel bad that I judged her because of who she is married to.So much of this last section of the book deals with being famous and what people expect of you, how they treat you, what they think of you, just because you ARE famous. It's such a great account of that facet life in the political limelight, or any limelight for that matter.

When this book came out, I read about it and was fascinated by the whole idea of it. I am so glad that I finally got to read it. It was just great. I want to read Ms. Sittenfeld's other books now, too!

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

I have always liked Joyce Maynard's books. Baby Love and To Die For, both of which I read several years ago, are still pretty fresh in my mind as books I really enjoyed. More recently I read The Usual Rules, a young adult novel dealing with 9/11. Although the subject matter in all of these books is disturbing, they are terrific and interesting reads and approach difficult subjects with frankness, honestly and sensitivity.

Maynard's a good writer - and has an interesting story.  She dropped out of Yale to live with J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye) when he was in his 50's and she just barely 20.  She wrote about that relationship in her memoir, At Home in the World, which I have not read, but plan to at some point.  

Like her other novels I have read, Labor Day deals with disturbing subject matter - a description of "what happens" in the book sounds implausible, but in Maynard's talented hands, the story is  believeable, very touching and poignant. She really develops these characters so skillfully for the reader that you feel you know and understand them and what they do and how they react to the situations described.

This is really a coming of age story - the story of Henry, a 13 year old boy living with his agoraphobic mother in a small town in New Hampshire (where Maynard grew up, by the way). When they venture out into the world right before Labor Day to buy new school clothes for Henry, they meet and are "abducted" by an escpaped convict. He turns out to be very different from what you would expect.

This is a page-turner, for sure, but also a very touching story about love.

Highly recommended!

One more interesting thing- for me anyway - is the fact that Danielle, my son's fiance, went to school with Maynard's children!

Strangers by Anita Brookner

One of my favorite authors....

But I found this kind of slow....tedious.....

The writing is incredible. I cannot undermine the writing. But I did find the story a bit ponderous.

The female characters are interesting....I enjoyed hearing about Vicky, who the main protagonist meets on a plane to Venice, but the other female characters....

Not so sure

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

A beautifully written and very disturbing novel that takes place in India in the mid-1980's amidst terrorist violence. The novel is pre 9/11 but "feels" very much like a post 9/11 novel.
There are four major characters: Sai, the judge, the cook and his son. Sai is the granddaughter of the judge and the cook is the judge's cook. Biju, the cook's son, manages to get to America to find the "charmed life," only to find it alienating, difficult and degrading.
Injustice is a major theme of the novel and we are exposed, again and again, on how the west exploited the east and how even within India, people exploit each other in so many ways every day.
This was a powerful book; at times, it was lyrical and "light" and at other times, dark and quite disturbing. Her writing is really incredible. Not an easy read, but an enlightening tale of lives and settings that are unfamiliar to me.

March by Geraldine Brooks

I think this book is going to be one of those few that is a "favorite," one I will mention when people ask, "What have you read lately?" or "What have you liked?" I have put Geraldine Brooks' other novels on the "Want to Read List" People of the Book has been there and I have a copy waiting for me.

March is an historical novel that takes place during the Civil War and is told from the point of view (primarily) of Mr. March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. If you read Little Women, you'll recall that the father and husband is absent throughout most of the novel. Ms. Brooks' novel tells us HIS story and what he experienced while away from his family. As a chaplain, he ventures South to aid the Union, with idealistic dreams of liberating slaves and helping the Northern cause. He is stunned and dismayed to find prejudice, greed, cruelty and racism on both sides. The descriptions of battles are stunningly portrayed, in grisly detail. Mr. March befriends many slaves and becomes involved with one in particular, a literate slave, Grace, who has her own interesting story, that I won't give away.

It was very interesting to read his portrayal of Marmee, the mother of the Little Women as a headstrong and idealistic young woman, involved in the Underground Railroad movement. I only recalled her as the loving mother of Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth. Reading this book makes me want to revisit Little Women.

The writing is really beautiful and the passages resonate. There is so much to learn from this book and so many comments on war, racism, forgiveness, idealism, love and betrayal. As soon as I finished the book, I was tempted to turn to the beginning and start all over again.

The Last Secret by Mary McGarry Morris

This is a favorite author of mine, so I was really excited to read another of her books. "Songs in Ordinary Time," "A Dangerous Woman," "The Lost Woman," and "Vanished" - I read them all. She's a great writer, a favorite of mine.

It took me way too long to read this book. Not sure why - just too busy I guess. I think it would have been much better if I had read it in a week, instead of three weeks. It was a good and compelling story but the drama was lost because I took too long to read it. I did read the conclusion in one setting and it was unsettling.

The book deals with secrets and deception and the consequences therein. The ending was very unsettling. At times I did not know if I liked or hated the main character, Nora. Did she do the right thing? Should she have "fessed up" earlier?