My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Carol Lynch Williams presents a heart pounding, engaging novel about a girl growing up in a Polygamist community, under the watchful eye and controlling thumb of a God-like figure, The Prophet. The Chosen One seems ripped from recent headlines about the infiltration of these communities and rescues of children ordered to marry men more than twice their ages, bear children, and become one of several wives.

Kyra is 13, impressionable and yet keenly aware that the way her family lives isn’t usual or normal or maybe not even right. She dares to do things she is not supposed to do– like read, speak to boys, sneak off and be alone with them under cover of darkness. The story begins with a visit from the most respected and revered man in the community– The Prophet.

The entire family is anticipating good news, especially Kyra’s father. It is not good news when it is decreed that 13 yr old Kyra will marry her 60 year old uncle, and become his seventh wife! Instantly Kyra is rebellious and obstinate. Not only does she not want to marry an old man, she doesn’t even like her uncle. The Prophet, however, has spoken. He says that God had decided who she will marry. She is to obey.

I’ve always been curious about polygamy– and not curious as in ‘I’d like to try it, just once’. Curious as in– what do these young girls tell themselves in order to make it okay for them to do what they’re told to do? To marry men too old for them, lay with them, bear their children, share their husbands with other women and not feel jealousy or anger or neglect? If this life is all you know, are you aware that it’s so very different?

Kyra is aware. And she can’t stand it. She wants no part of it. Added to this dilemma is her weekly sneak to the  bookmobile. Kyra devours the written word of the world outside the gates of the Compound. There is an entire Universe out there, one she knows nothing of, where the girls dress funny, and commit the sin of allowing their bras to show and talking to boys, where the modesty of long dresses and braided hair are frowned upon, even deemed ‘weird’. It becomes painfully obvious to Kyra that there is more to life than living in a trailer on a dirt road, with 19 siblings and three mothers and a father she loves dearly, but who wouldn’t stand up to the Prophet and his brother if his life depended on it. His life does, indeed depend on it. Refusal to marry her uncle Hiram could mean trouble for her entire family.

No, Kyra must fend for herself, and soon. The wedding date draws near.

The final chapter in this book makes it difficult to breathe. I found myself flipping pages as fast as they would go, trying to keep up with Kyra, Patrick (the driver of the bookmobile, who befriends Kyra and offers her a way out), Joshua (the boy she is not allowed to love), and the family.

I didn’t realize until I had finished reading this book that it was a young adult selection. I’m in my 30′s, so either this book was pretty darn good, or I am easily entertained. Or both.:)

The Chosen One is a fast read, but an exciting one, full of twists and ‘secrets’ of life in what is considered outside of the walls of the compound to be a cult– beatings, murders, ex-communications, fear, isolation. But there is also love, and family and hope and dreams– and the risk of losing all of them in search of freedom.

There is a section at the end, where I thought things could have been fleshed out more. It seems to end rather abruptly, with more than a few unanswered questions. Overall, I enjoyed it. Really quick read, great storyline.

View all my reviews.

My pal over at One Nerve Left gave me an award yesterday.

I’m so proud! Thanks Lizz!

In exchange for this FABULOUS award, I am supposed to award five blogs, and name five addictions. Holy……okay.

1. My Blackberry. Like Lizz, I love and adore this lil thing. I love it so much I sleep with it. Before I even have a second eye open, I check the Blackberry. First email is always my bank balance. Second email is…….whatever else comes overnight– emails from friends, blog comments, what have you.  I have several email accounts and they all roll to my Berry. I have the BlackBerry Flip. FREAKING LOVE IT. Then I check Twitter, because I like to see what the Gremlins do at night when I go  to bed. I also have several Twitter accounts. I may need help….

2. The Internet. You know how when you have Internet, you can take it or leave it, but then it goes out and suddenly you have 83 things you could be looking up RIGHT NOW if you had Internet? That’s how I am. That’s how everyone is, I guess. I just can’t stand to not have internet access. I have it on my phone and if I can get wifi on my iTouch. Speaking of….

3. My iPod Touch. This thing… is so much better than my old iPod. You get all the bells and the whistles of an iPhone but with more music storage and APPS APPS APPS. There’s an app for EVERY LIVING THING, I swear. I haven’t loaded mine up with a bunch of games because I’m not much of a gamer, but I do have solitare and Tetris and I play those a lot. My fave application is the Kindle App from Amazon. Just………… LOVE IT. I mean I also have eReader and Stanza, but I usually just use the Kindle. I zoom right through books on that thing and it’s nice to be able to drag my whole reading list with me everywhere I go. When I get to work, I put the phone on vibrate and plug the IPod into my speakers and rock out.

4. WordPress plugins. Seriously. I’m trying not to add too much, and most of what I add is fuctional for me and invisible to readers but I’ve stayed up, like, way too late reading through plug in lists and recommendations and surfing blogs to see who has cool stuff so I can look it up and see if I need to get that, too!! I… I have a problem, and it’s Plug in addiction.

5. So many things I could list here, for #5… food, sleep, more sleep. I think I will say, though, BOOKS. I’ve been getting back into reading this year and it’s been a sheer joy. It’s an escape into a world that I feel like is created just for me and in that span of time that I get lost in that world, all my real life problems go away. They don’t exist, they don’t fester and back up and bug me– they’re gone. I love that, I crave that, I need that, I’m addicted to that.

So there’s my hot five list of addictions. And now who to nominate… Hmmm. I am new to the blog0sphere, but I’ll nom some  that I love to read:

Becky Writes

Write Meg

Blissville USA

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Butterfly Confidential

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I love bookstores, because I love the smell of the paper that books are printed on. I love the stiffness of a new page, an uncracked binding, a smooth, unwrinkled cover. *warm fuzzies* I know book people know what I mean.

Digital books have a different feel. I use the Amazon Kindle app that works with the iPhone. I also use stanza and eReader but I mostly use the Kindle app. I love being able to drag 20 books around with me at a time. I love being able to read while waiting for the oil change, or while eating dinner (if the waitstaff will leave me ALONE. Its like a woman dining alone is the international signal for “she’s lonely, ask her how everything tastes 100 times’) or while taking a bath or—you know. That time when you’re “indisposed”. I wont admit to how many books I packed during my recent move that were in my bathroom. I like to pick up a book and open it to a random chapter and start reading. Even if I’ve read the book 100 times. I digress.

Digital books feel different. Smell different. Okay, not really but figuratively. The thing about Kindle is that there are no page numbers. So you have no idea where you are in the story. You never know when you’re almost done. Until you’re done. See, I have a bad habit of reading the ending first. And then starting at the beginning to see how the author got there. It’s a weird little game that it’s a little harder to play with Kindle. And frankly, it’s given me some great surprises– like at the end of Sharp Objects, when you figure out who’s been murdering little girls in a small podunk town. So glad I didn’t read the end!

So I said all that to say I got some new books! I’m quite excited. Every month I check out the IndieBound list of Notables and Great Reads. Last month I discovered The Help, Sharp Objects, The Last Child*, Brooklyn*, and Dark Places. Impressive list.

This month, more impressiveness:

Right of Thirst: Shattered by his wife’s death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he’s come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.

This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man’s desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane: Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest–to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. As the pieces of Deliverance’s harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem’s dark past then she could have ever imagined. Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman’s story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.

Nikolski: This is a story of three characters—Noah, Joyce, and the anonymous narrator—as each leave their far-flung birthplaces to follow their own personal songs of migration. All three end up in Montreal, each on his or her voyage of selfdiscovery, each compelled to deal with the mishaps of heartbreak and the twisted branches of their shared family tree. Filled with humor, charm, and marvelous storytelling, this novel links cartography, garbage-obsessed archeologists, pirates past and present, a mysterious book with no cover, and a broken compass whose needl e obstinately points to the Aleutian village of Nikolski (a minuscule village inhabited by thirty-six people, five thousand sheep, and an indeterminate number of dogs). This is a sweet, well-told story about three characters who break free from their families in order to live authentically.

Buffalo Lockjaw: James Fitzroy isn’t doing so well. Though his old friends in Buffalo believe his life in New York City is a success, in fact he writes ridiculous taglines for a greeting card company. Now he’s coming home on Thanksgiving to visit his aging father and dying mother, and unlike other holidays, he’s not sure how this one is going to end. Buffalo Lockjaw introduces a fresh new voice in American fiction.

Trouble: Josie is a Manhattan psychotherapist living a comfortable life with her husband and daughter—until she is struck with the sudden realization that she must leave her passionless marriage. At the same time, her college friend Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star, is being pilloried in the press for sleeping with a much younger man who happens to have a pregnant girlfriend. The two friends escape to Mexico City for a Christmas holiday of retreat and rediscovery of their essential selves. Sex has gotten these two bright, complicated women into interesting trouble, and the story of their struggles to get out of that trouble is totally gripping at every turn.

A Thread of Truth: At twenty-seven, having fled an abusive marriage with little more than her kids and the clothes on her back, Ivy Peterman figures she has nowhere to go but up. Quaint, historic New Bern, Connecticut, seems as good a place as any to start fresh. With a part-time job at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and budding friendships, Ivy feels hopeful for the first time in ages. But when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the quilt shop, Ivy’s unwitting appearance in an on-air promo alerts her ex-husband to her whereabouts. Suddenly, Ivy is facing the fight of her life – one that forces her to face her deepest fears as a woman and a mother. This time, however, she’s got a sisterhood behind her: companions as complex, strong, and lasting as the quilts they stitch.

The Walking People: Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johannah and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a softheaded goose by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living. Though she longs to return and show her family what she has made of herself, her decision to spare her children knowledge of a tragedy in her past forces her to keep her life in New York separate from the life she once loved in Ireland, and tears her apart from the people she is closest to. Even fifty years later, when the Ireland of her memory bears little resemblance to that of present day, she fears that it is still possible to lose all when she discovers that her children–with the best of intentions–have conspired to unite the worlds she’s so carefully kept separate for decades. A beautifully old-fashioned novel, The Walking People is a debut of remarkable range and power.

I can’t wait to dig into these new books… I still have a few from May that I haven’t even started, but at the rate I am reading, I will be ready for July in no time at all. I’m running a little challenge on a website I run, called Summer of Reading. Between June8th and September 8th, I’m going to be all about reading and writing. I’m excited!

I’ve spent all evening writing this one post! It’s time to watch Family Guy and relax.

Later,

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I think I will have to come back in a few days after thinking long and hard about this book. I read it VERY quickly, mostly today. I could NOT put it down, I needed to know what happened!

Here’s what I can say– the plot is intricately weaved and the imagery is VIVID. Flynn is… OMG. I think my new favorite author right now. Grisly and gory but nail bitingly exciting.

More later….

It’s later, and I’m still spinning from this book. There’s…so much to this novel. I can’t wait for Gillian Flynn’s new book!

We meet Libby Day immediately in the book and we’re shocked by such an unlikely protagonist. I think Flynn’s golden arrow is an unlikeable hero, because Libby is just as or more unlikable than the protagonist in Sharp Objects.

When we meet Libby, she seems to be perpetually seven years old, the age she was when her parents were murdered in a gruesome, grisly, Satanic attack, for which her brother, Ben is serving a life sentence in prison. Libby is decidedly what I like to call unfortunate looking.  She is missing fingers and toes, does not care for herself, lives in a ramshackle rental and depends on the kindness of strangers– known and unknown, because Libby will steal what you don’t give her. Libby is lazy and selfish, a thief and a liar, self absorbed, mean, and jealous–specifically when other murders usurp attention away from the Day Family tragedy. She both loves and hates the notoriety.

Libby’s got a problem already, on page three– she’s running out of money. The public had been very kind to her, setting up a trust fund for her, which she inherited when she turned 18, but now the money was gone and Little Girl Libby might be forced to grow up.

Enter Lyle Wirth, the leader, so to speak of the “Kill Club”, a group of enthusiasts who discuss and investigate odd murders such as the Day Massacre. While Libby thinks this club is odd and these people are looney, they’ll pay her to attend an upcoming convention. Libby needs money, so she goes for it.  While at the meeting, she’s confronted about her testimony against her brother Ben– how could she lie? Didn’t she realize Ben couldn’t have done it? Who did she think did it?

The idea that Ben didn’t murder her family had never crossed Libby’s mind. Why should it? She remembers pretty clearly, sort of, that it was Ben. Ben has a support group, however, that has been working to free him and now that the thought is planted Libby figures she may as well set about investigating the murder– half heartedly at first because all she really wanted was the money that the Kill Club would pay for her to talk to certain people and uncover certain things, namely memorablia from the house. Libby kept all of their mementos in a box under the stairs. Until then, she couldn’t bear to go through them.

Libby’s memories of that night are what she calls the Dark Place. She doesn’t like the dark place, but she spends quite a bit of time there, throughout the book, while she tries to uncover who actually was responsible for the crime, and why Ben is covering for it– as Libby points out, he’s never recanted or asked for a new trial or appealed the ruling. He seems content to serve his time, even if he’s innocent– WHY?

Dark Places is well written, bouncing between the POV of Libby, Ben, and her mother Patty. Ben is your typical angst ridden teenage boy with pre-pubescent sisters who annoy him. He struggles with peer pressure and being cool, and lets himself be used by Diondra, a bossy, rich girl on the good side of town, and her friend Trey, a Native American with a large chip on his shoulder and a lot of evil in his heart.  Patty is a mom who is struggling like a mom never struggled before. Despite all her efforts, she and her four children are about to lose the farm that they live on, that they’ve called home for so many years. Patty is desperate and sad and hopeless and her attempts to make the situation better is what starts the ball rolling in this disaster.  As the story rolls forward, more and more and more is revealed until the reader (or, me) finds herself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that has to be taken into account.

Just as in Sharp Objects, Flynn has mastered the art of the twist-out-of-nowhere. I just didn’t see the end result coming, and I LOVE that! I feel like it’s a waste of a book if I can predict what’s going to happen. Flynn writes stories that are unpredictably delicious, gripping, full of action and conflict. Each scene is important, no  characters are wasted… some of the best imagery I have read in a long time– much of it still sticks with me days later. I’m reminded of a scene that made my stomach turn when I read it, and my stomach is still turning. I’d say Flynn hit the bullseye with this book!

Again, like Sharp Objects, this is a dark, grisly story. It is not uplifting and happy go lucky. There is no moral and you won’t feel better having read it. There is no self discovery for the reader– unless you can identify with Libby, who feels that- “if you drew a picture of me, it would be a scribble with fangs.”

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View all my reviews.

My Goodreads review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sometimes my method of picking books is really calculated. I see a book someone else liked, and I stalk Amazon and GoodReads and Barnes&Noble for reviews. I google it and read blog entries and see how people liked it, because if I’m going to spend time reading a book, I want to like it.

And then sometimes I just see something and think, ‘hmph. I’ll read that, I guess.’

Sharp Objects was chosen via the latter method. I saw it on a list of May 2009 something or other and added it to Kindle without even really thinking. I don’t even think I read the description. Suffice it to say,I think I started this book sometime last week, maybe over the weekend. It’s Tuesday and I just finished it. Literally a few minutes ago.. I’ve been buried in it all weekend.
(cont’d)

Chicago newspaper reporter Camile Preaker has been sent back to tiny, one-horse-town Wind Gap, where most of her high school friends stuck around and married the jocks, the head of the Science Club, the Yearbook Editor. Camille had left Wind Gap a long time ago, and wasn’t in a hurry to return, but her Editor is itching to break a story and Wind Gap’s recent child murders had ‘Breaking News’ all over it.

Despite her protests, Camille is back in Wind Gap, imposing on her mother and stepfather and half sister, and investigating the strange murders of two young girls in the small, close-knit town. Camille’s family defines dysfunctional. Wind Gap doesn’t want her there. Her cutting and her alcohol dependency thrown on top just mixes everything into a great big ball of drama.
I’m glad chose this book the way I did. I’m seeing a lot of reviews about how dark and macabre the story line is and how jilted the writing is and how awkward the story was told. I don’t think I’d have picked it, if I saw those reviews first. I really just didn’t get a sense of any of that. I was hooked from about paragraph two, fell asleep reading the first night, could NOT stop– the more that was brought to light about Camille, her mother, her sister, her whole history with tiny Wind Gap, the more I was intrigued.

Now let me be plain– I don’t really read fluff. I don’t do feel good. I don’t do chick lit and sarcastic little ditties about how funny kids are and I’m fat but I’m a spunky chick and that’s why you need to love me. I don’t do Non- Fiction, much. There’s a place for that, I’m sure. It’s just not on my bookshelf. I’m the type of person that watches Forensic Files and loves Shawshenk Redemption and will watch an entire day of A&E Crime programming and Law and Order Special Victims Unit– I love the stuff.

I loved this book. I didn’t find it particularly gory. Just strikingly, painfully, realistically… real. I hate reading glossed over horror or pain or despair. I don’t want flowery, purple prose– sometimes when it’s raw and disjoined and just ‘out there’ it pangs more. It makes you sit on the edge of your seat and go ‘oh, wow’.

Camille is that character that you kind of dislike at first– she seemed whiny and weak and I wasn’t sure what to make of her. Then as things began to come to light and unfold (her relationship with her mother, her ODD little sister), I started to gain a little respect for Camille. By the end I positively loved her, as a main character- an unlikely hero, a vulnerable creature.

NOW. Let’s talk about Adora and Amma, two of the weirdest, oddest, most inexplicable characters in the entire book. I spent all of the book going OMYGODWTF? I mean, one moment they were nice and sweet as punch, and the next, a giant pendulum swing in the other direction and OH. My. Lord. Adora got on my NERVES. Amma was just a brat. Wanted to slap them both and I willed Camille away from them SO many times.

Okay, the killer??? Can I just say I KNEW IT?!?!? I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT!

View all my reviews.

Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

From Publisher’s Weekly:

Flynn gives new meaning to the term “dysfunctional family” in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille’s hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending. She writes fluidly of smalltown America, though many characters are clichés hiding secrets. Flynn, the lead TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, has already garnered blurbs from Stephen King and Harlan Coben.

Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Libby Day’s mother and two younger sisters were viciously slaughtered when she was seven, and her brother, Ben, against whom she testified, has been incarcerated ever since. Twenty-five years later, Libby is still suffering from the aftereffects of the notorious murders. Although it sometimes takes her days to work up the psychic energy to wash her hair, she is not quite the timorous victim the press makes her out to be. When she finds out that the trust fund set up in her name is about to run out of money (the do-gooders have long since moved on to fresh tragedies), she starts gouging money from members of the Kill Club, a group of true-crime fans obsessed with the Day murders. Greedily pricing family memorabilia, wondering how much the Kill Club creeps will pony up for an old birthday card, she learns that none of them believes her brother committed the crime. As she starts investigating, the narrative returns to the day of the murders, intercutting Libby’s current-day hunt with the actual events of the day. Despite the fact that the ending is known from the get-go, Flynn (Sharp Objects, 2006) injects these chapters with unbearable tension. And unlovable Libby, mean-spirited and greedy, shows her true colors and her deep courage. A gritty, riveting thriller with a one-of-a-kind, tart-tongued heroine. –Joanne Wilkinson

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin

From Booklist
In his latest novel, following The Master (2004), a celebrated and highly imaginative  re-creation of the life of American novelist Henry James, Toibin maintains his focus on the past. Keeping the pace relatively slow and stressing the wealth of authoritative detail, he contrasts small-town Ireland and big-city Brooklyn in the early 1950s, highlighting the vast differences between the two in customs and opportunity. Eilis Lacey, a smart young woman unafraid of hard work, must leave employment-poor Ireland to find a more lucrative existence in booming New York City. Under the auspices of an Irish priest, Eilis secures employment at a department store and residence in a rooming house for young women. She meets a handsome, charming Italian man, and their relationship quickly flowers into love. When her outgoing sister dies in Ireland, Eilis returns home and must face the decision to stay put or go back to the more exciting life she had begun to create in Brooklyn. –Brad Hooper

The Last Child, by by John Hart

From Publishers Weekly
A year after 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon disappeared on her way home from the library in an unnamed rural North Carolina town, her twin brother, Johnny, continues to search the town, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders, in this chilling novel from Edgar-winner Hart (Down River). Det. Clyde Hunt, the lead cop on Alyssa’s case, keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother, who has deteriorated since Alyssa’s abduction and her husband’s departure soon afterward. When a second girl is snatched, Johnny is even more determined to find his sister, convinced that the perpetrator is the same person who took Alyssa. But what he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined, sending shock waves through the community and putting Johnny’s own life in danger. Despite a tendency to dip into melodrama, Hart spins an impressively layered tale of broken families and secrets that can kill.

On the Divinity of Second Chances, by Kaya McLaren

From Booklist
Jade’s family is slowly pulling apart. Her grandmother lives on a farm and spends her days angrily shooting at her neighbor with a pistol. Her father, sidelined by a heart attack, putters around the house alphabetizing everything and secretly reading Forbes magazine. Her mother deals with the throes of menopause by painting pictures of raisins. Her older sister, Olive, was recently dumped by her boyfriend because she refused to live in a tipi in the woods with him. Her younger brother, Forrest, who committed a horrible crime at age 14, lives in self-exile in a tree house in the Idaho wilderness. Jade herself is doing all right, even if the only assistance she gets is from her spirit guide, Grace. When Olive abandons her job and reveals that she is pregnant, the family members realize they’ve reached a crisis point and they must come back together to find what they’ve lost along the way. McLaren’s involving novel is an uplifting story about unconditional love and family ties. –Hilary Hatton

Not Becoming My Mother, by Ruth Reichl

From Booklist
Irreverently immortalized as the klutzy cook who renounced edibility in favor of creativity, Reichl’s mother, and her quirky kitchen habits,provided frivolous fodder for Reichl’s previous culinary memoirs. But in this keenly felt retrospective, Reichl reveals another side of her mother, whose life seemed a shining example of what not to do. Where once Miriam harbored visions of being a doctor and applied her formidable intellect in the business world, she ultimately subjugated her own ambition and desires in favor of those of her family, thus providing her daughter with a seemingly negative role model. Sadly typical of her time and generation, Miriam surrendered personal dreams to suit society’s restrictive ideals of feminine conduct, and paid a steep psychic price. Only upon discovering a hidden trove of diaries and letters after Miriam’s death was Reichl able to understand the full extent of her mother’s sacrifices. Candid and insightful, Reichl’s intensely personal and fiercely loving tribute acknowledges her mother as both the source and inspiration behind her success. –Carol Haggas

The Air Between Us, by Deborah Johnson

From Publishers Weekly
In Johnson’s vivid debut, Revere, Miss., is a 1966 small town teetering on the brink of integration. Willie B. Tate Jr., a 10-year-old black boy known as Critter, drives poor white man Billy Ray Puckett to the whites-only emergency room after Billy Ray has a hunting accident. Caught up in the middle of the fallout after Billy Ray’s unexpected death is Dr. Cooper Connelly, a prominent white doctor who serves on the school board and has controversial prointegration views. Cooper is a man with secrets, including why he keeps company with Madame Melba Obrensky, a raceless woman with a mysterious past who manages to keep herself well-apprised of all sides of the town’s doings. Melba happens to be the next-door neighbor of Dr. Reese Jackson, a respected black physician who has managed to cross the race barrier and establish his practice on Main Street. As the heat of the school board meetings about integration and of the investigation into Billy Ray’s death increase, the atmosphere becomes explosive. Johnson tries to squeeze too much out of the limited plot, but compelling character studies keep pages turning.

My review on goodreads.com

rating: 5 of 5 stars

Synopsis courtesy kathrynstockett.com:

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women–mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends–view one another.

A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

This book was a slow start for me, but once it got going, it was hard to put down. I was almost late for work one morning, because I had started reading and couldn’t stop. I literally sat down 4 hours ago to finish it, because I just couldn’t stand not knowing what happened anymore.

The Help is a riveting, entertaining first novel– I think Ms. Stockett should be quite proud of herself. I fell in love with Skeeter and Aibleen and Minny and Celia, pitied Elizabeth and hated Hilly to my CORE. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to live in such a time of change– on either side. To cling so desperately to everything you’ve ever known, only to have it pulling and growing and changing and slipping right from your fingertips– on the other side, wishing and hoping and praying for things to change, but realizing that things have to get worse before they get better.

Loved it loved it loved it– I kind of wanted Hilly to ‘get hers’ before the book ended but *sigh*. In a few weeks I’ll read it again!

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The first third is basically King’s autobiography– events in his life that have made him who he is. I enjoyed the first ten pages but I am a ‘get tot the point’ kind of girl, so I skipped to the second part, which was most enjoyable.

Part 2, On Writing, was basically King’s best advice to writers. In summation, here’s pretty much what I picked up:

1. Read a lot. Read, read, read, read. Turn off the TV, remove all distractions, read because you enjoy reading.
2. Write. Write because you want to write, because it’s crawling to get out of you. Write like it’s your job. Set a goal to write daily (1000 words at first, then 2000-3000) if you can do it. Don’t leave your ‘spot’ until you’re done writing.
3. Don’t do all the cliche things writers supposedly do, i.e. write for money, or ‘plot’ your story.
4. Don’t assume that you control the story– the story controls you. Let it tell itself, don’t try to push it in any direction.
5. Remove unnecessary words. Always, always, always, use fewer words whenever possible. In descriptions, in narration, in character, in dialogue– delete the uncessesary
6. On the other hand, don’t tell, show. Don’t tell me that someone is uneducated. Show me with crafty use of dialect in conversation. Don’t tell me someone is tired, overworked, frustrated– SHOW the reader.
7. Create an IR- an Ideal Reader. Decide what your Ideal Reader would want to see and write to them.
8. Never write because it seems like a job. The hardest part of life should be when you’re purposely not writing.
9. From time to time, read bad prose. It will teach you what not to do!
10. (I’ve heard this a lot and have only seen it done really well a few times) Don’t use flashbacks. Talk about what’s GOING to happen and not what already has.

The last third of the book is talking about his 1999 accident in which he nearly died. After which he decided to finish On Writing and get back to the business of writing great fiction. It ends with an example of a piece of a chapter that he had edited and polished and allowed readers to see the transformation from an ‘okay’ piece to something that he’d call ‘good’.

I liked it, what I read. As time allows I’ll go back and read the history– it just didn’t hold my attention, much.

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I am, annoyingly, highly critical of myself. I always think it’s boring, I always think it needs more, I always find a typo, or think I should have said something else or something better or omitted a word or added a scene. It’s nerve wracking. Why do I keep doing this, again? Oh. Because I want to improve.

I’m off to read Stephen King, On Writing, who says ‘if you’re a bad writer, there’s no hope of becoming a good one and if you’re a good writer, and want to become great, fuggedaboutit.’

I’m not sure if I believe that… I’ve also read that writing is easy, anyone can do it. It’s editing and revising that creates the story. Interesting juxtapositions. To me, anyway.

O/T I have a fly in my bedroom and it’s driving me INSANE!