The Sweet Escape

Last week I was craving the feel of an actual book in my hands. For more than a year, I’ve been reading books via the Kindle App on my iPod Touch. It’s a great way to carry my Reading and To Be Read libraries around with me. I find opportunities to read at the oddest times and the oddest places. It’s nice to not have to dig a book out of my purse. Sometimes though, I just want to hold a book in my hands. I love the smell of a new book, a spine that hasn’t been cracked, pages that almost feather and the printing dust that flies out of the crevices when you fan them.

I’ve been eying a few books at Indiebound and Amazon. I finally bit the bullet and picked up one I’d been wanting to read but hadn’t because of the reviews. I decided to let my own interests gauge what I read, and since A Reliable Wife is a historical novel and I like that sort of thing, I picked it up. It is a hefty 291 pages. I am nearly halfway through.

Goolrick spins an interesting yarn. His description of the yarn, however, goes on and on and on. One of the issues I have with so many writers is the overdose of imagery and detail. Perhaps it is my short span of attention, but I find myself skipping half a page here, a full page or two there, of just description. I’m one who believes that setting is another character in a story, and you must give readers an accurate representation of what’s happening around your characters, what’s happening in between your dialog. I made a note this morning, in my Goodreads status update that I felt this book could be half as long and just as good. The attention to detail is amazing and yet, to me, slightly overdone.

The story itself is riveting so far! Ralph Truitt is a man who has been rich for so long he hardly notices anymore, except that most of the town works for him in some fashion. He is a lonely man, not old but not spry. He’s not had a companion in more than 20 years and uh……………it shows. Goolrick writes about Truitt’s desires the way only a man can. I almost feel the man’s pain! He seems painfully self aware of what others have and he does not. He feels as if people pity him or laugh at him behind his back. Living alone in the desolate prairie, where the snow piles high every winter and traps people in their own homes, on their own land begins to drive people mad. Without a companion, Truitt would spend the rest of his days alone and surely go mad with the rest of them.

Catherine Land is the woman who response to Truitt’s advertisement for ‘A Reliable Wife’. A simple woman is all Truitt asks for. A simple woman is what he thinks he’s getting. Oh, but Ms Land has some tricks up her sleeves.  She presents herself as something she is not. She has a scheme, a plan in her mind that must be carried out. The first part is to marry Truitt. I’m to the point where the plan she has set in motion has met a snag. And now I’m wondering how this is going to work out.

Such an interesting read, though I can’t help but think I’d have been done by now, had I bought this book on Kindle. I’ve realized that I love to lie in bed and read, and with my beside lamp on the fritz and the overhead light a little too bright, the atmosphere in my bedroom is just not very conducive to reading. Or writing, for that matter.

In all, I’m enjoying the story, skipping massive amounts of excessive (for me) detail, and already trying to predict the end. Can’t wait to finish so I can give it a proper review!  Preview this book on Goodreads  [HERE]

The other book I picked up is The Girl She Used To Be, by David Cristofano. I haven’t even cracked it open yet, but it is the tale of a girl whose family was in the Witness Protection Program. She is found, by someone she used to know and, against her better judgement and advisement, dives all at once back into her old life. I’m a fan of crime drama and thrillers, and since Grisham and Lescroart don’t have anything new for me to read, we’ll see if this one fills the void momentarily.

It’s a lovely Saturday in Atlanta. A perfect day to take the books outside and soak up some sun!

Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sugar starts with a bang and ends with a heartfelt gasp.

At the beginning of Bernice McFadden’s Sugar, we don’t meet Sugar. We meet Jude, so to speak. Jude is the ghost in the story, the crux of every emotional scene in the novel. Jude is the murdered child of Pearl, a woman who befriends her next door neighbor that happens to go by the name ‘Sugar’.

Sugar is what polite people call a woman of ill repute and what not-so-polite people call a whore or a prostitute, blowing into the town of Bigelow on the wind of a powerful storm. The people of Bigelow are simple and quiet, a little bit superstitious and a whole lot judgemental. It seems like Pearl is the only person that really see Sugar for who she is… perhaps because Pearl is about the most naive person in Bigelow.

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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I didn’t read The Time Traveler’s Wife. The synopsis never struck me as something I really wanted to read and I couldn’t get into it. I can’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Probably good, because from the reviews, a lot of people went into reading Her Fearful Symmetry on the heels of Time Traveler’s Wife and expected it to be similar. It apparently wasn’t. I also didn’t know the two books were written by the same author– this book came recommended by two different people in two different circles of friends. I picked it up on a whim and started reading it. I find the best books that way!

This story begins oh, so right. Niffenegger (you mind if I call her Audrey? That name is a toughie)jumps right into the middle of the story and wades around in it. Our main character, you see… dies on Page One. And I figure if someone dies on Page One, there’s a good reason for it and a good story behind it.

This novel is the story of two sets of twins: Edie and Elspeth, and Edie’s twin daughters Julia and Victoria.  Edie and Elspeth are estranged. Have been for nearly twenty years. Elspeth’s terminal illness does not change this. Elspeth lives in London, in a flat above  companion Robert. Edie, her husband Jack, and the twins live in the States.

When Elspeth dies, she leaves her flat, all of her belongings and her money to the twins, with the stipulation that they have to live in the flat for a year before they can sell it. And that their parents, Edie and Jack, must never set foot in it. Her papers and diaries are removed, property of Robert. No one is to see them. Robert avoids reading them until absolutely necessary.

The twins are 20, but are small and thin and alarmingly co-dependent. Victoria is a mirror image of Julia, down to the beauty mark on her cheek. Victoria is weak, with a heart defect and severe asthma. Julia delights in taking care of Victoria, a constant companion. Victoria is the more artistic and fashionable one. She creates and sews and makes her own clothing. Julia is the smart one, the healthy and strong one. The trade-off, Julia thinks, isn’t fair. Victoria is the pretty one, despite their being twins. Julia is envious of the attention Victoria receives without even trying and insists on clinging to her. They have to do everything together. One cannot attend school without the other. One cannot work without the other. Both are still virgins because…what one does, the other must also. The suffocation is palpable. (more…)

Rainwater by Sandra Brown

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a huge fan of period pieces, especially if the author does a superb job of transporting the reader back to a simpler time. I’m not really a thriller reader, so I had never even thought to read Sandra Brown before. It was a recommended novel on a Kindle list so I picked it up one day a few weeks ago.

From page one, I was engrossed in the story. We follow Ella through her everyday life as the owner of a boarding house, preparing breakfast and daily meals, cleaning, being a general companion to her boarders, her maid and right hand woman Margaret and her son, Solly. Solly is a special needs child, living in a time when doctors were just beginning to discover autism and not treat it like a mental illness. Ella rails against putting Solly in an Institution, away from her, where he’ll be locked up like a criminal. He’d live a much better life, albeit limited, by her side.

Enter one David Rainwater, a relative of the local Physician. He needs a room and Ella has one. He’s calm and disarming, polite and charming, especially to the two old ladies -sisters- who also board at Ella’s. Something about him both sets Ella off guard and intrigues her. The comfort she feels around him makes her uncomfortable, and his almost immediate rapport with Sully is both heartwarming and embarrassing. Mr Rainwater is able to accomplish so much in such a short time, more than Ella had tried or had time to accomplish in the entire time he was alive. (more…)