The Halfway House by Kathleen Noel

I was at the library one day picking up one of the multitude of books that I had requested (you know, because I had seen it on NPR or something) and I was walking by a book display and saw this novel in it.  I think the display was about summer reading or something like that - and I was intrigued, so I picked up the book and read the inside flap and decided that I would get the book.

Angie Voorster is 17 at the start of this novel and she is everything, seemingly, that you would want your daughter to be, at least on the outside. She is a star athlete - a swimmer that has broken, is breaking and continues to break records - and she has a future in swimming at a division one school. She is also a straight A student, making her a candidate for the Ivy League. She lives with her mom (Jordana), her dad (Pieter) and her younger brother, Luke, who is also a swimmer.  Things seem to be going well until, in the middle of the boys' race, she dives headlong into the pool and to the bottom, convinced that she can breath underwater.  Thus begins Angie's struggles with seemingly depthless mental illness (I think bipolar disorder because she is alternately manic and then depressed). The book focuses on Angie's battle with her mental illness and her family's struggles to deal with their loved one's illnesses.

What was absolutely wonderful about this novel is that Ms. Noel is somehow able to channel the thoughts of a mentally ill person so authentically. Her novel's chapters alternate between all four family members, and are told in each of their voices. Angie's chapters reflect her current mental state - whether medicated or not - and it was wonderful.

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson

I picked this up because it looked intriguing to me and boy, was it fantastic.  In this novel, Christine is a middle-aged woman who has a bizarre form of amnesia.  She cannot remember anything from day to day and whenever she goes to sleep, her memory is wiped clean. Each morning, she wakes up and has no clue who she is, where she is, how old she is or any other bits of knowledge that we take for granted. Imagine having to re-create your entire life history each day that you wake up - that's what she has to go through. She lives with a man named Ben - her husband - and her only way to remember is by reading the journal that she keeps daily.

This is SJ Watson's first novel and I hope that he will continue to write more for us because it was fantastic - a good premise, wonderful writing and great characters. It was a page turner - I found myself constantly thinking about the novel, the characters and what would happen at inopportune moments. I also wondered when the next time that I could sit down to read the novel would be. The book is particularly jarring in the first few pages, but continue on with it - it becomes jarring because you have no idea what is going on and that is what makes the start of the novel and the entire novel itself brilliant - you experience what Christine is actually experiencing on a daily basis. And it is wonderful.  Totally worth it.

This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman

Jake Bergamot is your typical, upper middle class New York City student - he is 15, goes to a prestigious school and likes to party with his friends. At a party, he rebuffs the advances of a pretty drunk eighth grader. But, in the early morning hours, he gets an email with a salacious video attached to it - one that the eighth grader made specifically for Jake and for Jake only. On some level, Jake was honored but on another level, he was absolutely horrified and shocked by the lewd and lascivious video that ended up in his email in box, so he forwarded it to his friend, in part an attempt to get rid of the hot potato. And you can see where this goes. Within a few hours, the video that was private initially has been posted everywhere on the internet and has thousands of hits. As a result of this video gone viral, Jake's and his family's lives are turned upside down.

Schulman's book raises a lot of good themes: privacy in the internet age, shame, gender roles, internet protocol, and how they all intersect with each other and with the law.  I particularly liked how Schulman focused on the domestic impact that this had on Jake and his family - I felt like it wasn't forced and was, somehow, more authentic.  It would have been too stereotypical if Schulman had focused exclusively on the girl that made the video. I also thought that it was really noble for Schulman to attempt to take on such extensive themes and topics as the ones that she has taken on. However, it was a tad predictable in its outcome.  I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style itself - it was quick and not complicated and easy to break into small segments (essential for a mom!).

Get from library but don't add to your own personal collection.

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

This was hands down one of the best books that I have read this year.   Geraldine Brooks has absolutely outdone herself with this novel.

Caleb's Crossing mostly takes place in 17th Century Martha's Vineyard and 17th century Cambridge (most notably, Harvard Yard).  Bethia Mayfield is a teenage Puritan whose family is quite wealthy by colonial standards - her grandfather is the founder of the island itself and had emigrated there in order to establish a haven that was outside the purview of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bethia is an intelligent young woman, who learns Hebrew, Greek and Latin seemingly by osmosis - she listens in on the lessons given to her older brother and learns not only the ancient languages but the language of the native American tribe also inhabiting the island. Bethia also has an aptitude for wandering and, during her wanderings of the island, meets a young Native American man who is eventually adopted by her family and renamed Caleb. Caleb is tutored extensively by Bethia's father and eventually "crosses" into Anglo-American culture, thereby earning the title of the novel. We follow Caleb, Bethia and her brother, Makepeace, as they travel from the island, to prep school in Cambridge and, eventually, to Harvard University.

I loved this novel.  I loved Bethia quite frankly.  On some level, I connected to her internal struggle. She was continuously struggling to answer the question of how to exist within the narrow confines of what society dictated that she be, even though she was so much smarter and empathetic than society would allow her to be. For instance, she was so much smarter than her brother, Makepeace, especially with regards to the classics. However, while her brother got the opportunity to at tend prep school and, potentially Harvard,  Bethia was indentured to the dean of the prep school in order to enable her brother to become educated.  Bethia also was particularly empathetic and friendly towards Caleb and the other "salvages," often considering them her friends and often viewing them sympathetically and as friends and family; however, the majority of the society around her viewed them with repugnance. What I also particularly loved about Brooks' narrative is how authentic it seemed - Brooks wrote the novel in colloquial speech, never once breaking from the speech patterns and written patterns that a woman in Bethia's socioeconomic status would have engaged in.  This level of authenticity went a long way in contributing to the richness and powerfulness of the novel itself. In this way, I felt like I was really inside of Bethia's head - hearing and experiencing her thoughts as she herself was thinking them.

This book is beautifully and engagingly written and a must read for all.

My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe

This is a memoir by Ben Ryder Howe that follows his life as he works as an editor at The Paris Review while also buying and operating a deli with his wife and her mother. Howe and his wife, Gab, buy the deli as a last, Hail Mary, attempt to make enough money to move out of her parents' basement and into their own place. Howe hopes that the deli will make them enough money that they can either buy or rent their own space and begin their own family. Gab puts additional value on the deli - it's her way of giving something back to her mother, a Korean emigre who raised Gab and her siblings seemingly on her own in a foreign country.

The memoir follows the intense ups and downs and the trials and tribulations of owning a deli in New York City. The trials include a mugging, busts for selling cigarettes to underage customers, fines and massive tax bills in addition to being taken advantage of by vendors and the weather alike. During the same period, Howe works at his day job - as a senior editor on The Paris Review during the last few years that George Plimpton ran it. Howe struggles at that job too, sometimes failing massively in a professional sense and also dealing with tragedy that would lead to most of the staff leaving for other jobs.

Howe may not be a successful businessman or a successful editor at an amateur magazine but he is an engaging and evocative storyteller.  This was a funny, down to earth and tremendously readable account of owning a small business in one of the biggest cities of the world. I often enjoyed learning about the day to day minutiae that he had to endure in order to work and own these jobs and his tangents often got a chuckle out of me.  Howe was able to talk about the places and people he dealt with in such color that you almost felt like you were there with them while all the action was occurring.

Go out and get this one right away.

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon - contains spoilers

This book is the third book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  I read Outlander, the first book in the series, years ago and then Dragonfly in Amber in October right around the time that Gabby was born and the series will occasionally call to me. And call to me it did now, so I picked up the third book.

This book picks up where Dragonfly in Amber left off - Claire has returned to her own time.  Twenty years has passed by and it is 1967.  Clair is living in the United States with her daughter, Brianna and they are visiting in Scotland attempting to determine whether Jaime has survived the battle of Culloden.  Assisting them is Roger Wakefield, who maintains a consistent interest in Brianna romantically. Claire, Roger and Brianna must discover whether Jaime Fraser has survived and, if he has, whether any of them should go back in time to meet him. If she goes back, she must attempt to rekindle a romantic relationship with a man that she hasn't seen in 20 years and who could have changed, and who has a period of his life that she knows nothing about.

I adored this book - I liked it somewhat better than Outlander actually but not as much as Dragonfly in Amber. I thought that Dragonfly was really well done, historically and the research that went into it in order to get the time period was phenomenal. However, this book was phenomenal in the sense that the research was there and Gabaldon did a masterful job in balancing the historical fiction aspect and the romance aspect.  I generally get pretty turned off by books that are so over the top "romance" that everything else is sacrificed.  That wasn't present here.  Gabaldon did really well in balancing the romance aspect with what was going on historically at the time.  It was also apparent that Gabaldon educated herself extensively on the historical atmosphere of the time as well as certain aspects of the natural environment that the characters encountered - not an easy task - and is able to make us feel like we are there, in the middle of the scene and the action without overwhelming us.

This is not a book that should be read piecemeal - it is a long book and many of the things that happen in the beginning of the novel come back into play at the end, as do many of the characters, so it is best to devote a few days to this book in chunks at a time. This shouldn't be too hard because the book itself is very difficult to put down.

Loved it...

Favorite novel?

So I recently wrote an essay here about why I have two favorite novels and what they are. Please head on over there to read the article!