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. 

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

This is a book read in one of my book clubs.  I did enjoy it and learned a lot from it.  However, it was not a book that was particularly "discussable."  One of my friends in the club said that it is considered Historical Anthropology, which is interesting, but I am not sure a real categorization in literature.  But that is not important.

Here is a good synopsis of the theme:  Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little-known region of China and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

There is lots to learn about tea, too!  The story is somewhat predictable however, which bothered me at the end.  But I am not sorry that I read it.  I just didn't feel like there was much to discuss.  In a book club book, I like to have conversations about the book, more than this lent itself to.

It.Goes.So.Fast by Mary Louise Kelly

I have been listening to this NPR reporter for years and she's always been one of my favorites.  Currently, she is one of the hosts of All Things Considered.  I heard that she had written this book, and I heard her interviewed about it, and I knew I had to read it.  I am so glad that I did.  One of the best books so far this year.

By the way, I listened to the book, in her own voice, which made it even better. I do recommend using that format.

In this memoir, Ms. Kelly describes how she has been juggling her life for the past 17 years as a mother and a professional with an extremely demanding but amazing job.  She realizes during her older son's senior year of high school that she has missed the majority of his soccer games, and soccer is his LIFE!

There are very interesting stories from "the front" covering the news,  accounts of her life as a mom and wife and yes, daughter.  I could not stop listening to this audiobook.  Get it and listen. 

Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine

 

I loved this book! I have read many of Schine's other books, most recently the Grammarians and this new one did not disappoint!

Here is what the New Yorker says, 

Julian, a directionless young New Yorker, ventures west, to Venice Beach, to help care for his zesty ninety-three-year-old grandmother. When the pandemic descends, he finds himself sequestered indefinitely with her, as she recounts memories of her Anschluss-ruptured Vienna childhood and her family’s subsequent immigration to Hollywood, where she came to know legends including Arthur Schoenberg and Greta Garbo. The novel emphasizes echoes across history but explores intergenerational gaps, too, and—despite handling such weighty subject matter as survivor’s guilt, sexual repression, and the ongoing traumas of racial and religious persecution—maintains a remarkable lightness of tone and of characterization.

I was so pleased that I was reading this on my iPad because I was constantly looking things up and I learned so much about German intellectuals living in LA in that time period.  I was not aware that so many moved there to escape Nazism in Vienna (and other locales.) This was particularly relevant for me, having just seen the play, Leopoldstadt on Broadway.  

This book was a much more delightful way to acknowledge that time period.  

Highly recommend.  Loved the poignant ending, too.