The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey

Note: Per FTC regulations, this is a review of an advanced reader copy that I received free from the Hachette Book Group. This book will be released to the public on February 15th.

 

 

I admit, with my lack of Irish heritage and slim understanding of Irish history, that perhaps I was not the best audience for Patricia Falvey's The Yellow House.  I honestly couldn't be certain if the plot of the book was something that was common in families during the time of Ireland's "troubles" or if Falvey merely packed in many elements of that time period in order to create and maintain the drama and forward movement of the story.

Eileen O'Neill is the daughter of a farmer and a housewife in the early part of the twentieth century, growing up in a happy home with her older brother Frankie and younger sister Lizzie.  The lovely mountain Slieve Gullion can be seen from her home, and Eileen finds comfort and joy in the mountain, thinking of it as a mother figure.  All is well in the yellow house, with love and music, until the day Lizzie goes to the fever hospital and their mother comes home without her; Lizzie is gone.  As the rumblings of the Irish revolution come nearer, Eileen's mother leaves them with Frank in tow, and later suffers a breakdown which puts her in the hospital for the duration of the book, with Frank's Protestant grandfather raising him.  When her father is killed by English loyalists, Eileen flees with her baby brother Paddy and takes job in a mill in a nearby town to save money to fund her dream of one day reclaiming the Yellow House for her family and reuniting them.  

This is where I felt the need to suspend my disbelief.  Eileen becomes a labor reformist, forges a relationship with the wealthy son of the Protestant mill owner,  becomes a talented fiddler with the Ulster minstrels, marries a Catholic seminarian-turned-rebel, participates in IRA activities, swears in Gaelic, and gives birth to a daughter named Eoife (Eee-fa).  I'm sure if tattoos were in vogue back then she'd have had a shamrock tramp stamp.  

It is an engaging story; I just found it a tidge unbelievable.  More outlandish things happen, and there is a happy ending.  Falvey's writing is beautiful, almost lyrical, but as I said, I had no prior knowledge of the subject matter.  However, Falvey intrigued me and I'd like to read more on the topic.

Title Sixty Six: Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

Ok, I'm totally going to cheat for a couple of posts, okay? From the author's very own Official Lullaby Site:

"Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a forty-ish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation, he discovers an ominous thread: the presence on the scene of these deaths of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where there appears an African chant or "culling song." This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction and once it lodges in Streator's brain, he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle, who specializes in selling haunted (or "distressed") houses (wonderfully high turnover) and who lost a child to the culling song years before, for a cross-country odyssey. Their goal is to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic eco-terrorist boyfriend, Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family. "

This was my first Palahniuk. (No, you cannot revoke my Pajiba card for that. It's in the rules that I've just made up.) I didn't really know what to expect, so I wasn't really surprised when I was completely blown away. I mean, damn, this dude can write. And somehow make you totally uncomfortable while keeping you so intrigued that you can't put the damn thing down. There were passages that made me actually squirm in my seat but I had to know what happened. None of the characters are likeable. In fact, they're all pretty much creepy and I felt like I needed a shower after I finished. But it was good. It wasn't so much a novel as a living thing, breathing words and images. I won't ever read it again, because it's too dark for me, but it is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Title Sixty Five: Star Bright by Catherine Anderson

No. Just...no. I must have been high when I decided to read this. I mentioned it to a friend and he replied, "I would rather poke my own eyes out than read that." I may take it out back, put it on the grill, and set it on fire.

Rainie fakes her own death while on a cruise with her husband because he's going to kill her. She ends up working as a bookkeeper for a rancher dude in Crystal Falls, Oregon. Of course he's hot, and of course he sees her as a delicate flower that he wants to pick. They fall in love and all. His entire extended family foists themselves and their "aw shucks"-iness upon her, and she decides she'll marry him, but she has to divorce the psycho, who apparently killed his two previous wives to get their money, like he was going to do to Rainie. She gets her divorce, the FBI tries to use her as bait to get the husband, it doesn't work. One night, in a scene stolen right out of the movie Sleeping with the Enemy (which is discussed earlier in the book) the husband shows up in the backseat of Rainie's car and forces her to drive to her apartment - she won't live with Parker, the rancher, because he's Catholic and his family wouldn't approve and he's fucking THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD - and tries to kill her with a mix of Ambien and wine, and making it look like she offed herself. (Seriously? I can take a giant Vicodin for my broken spine and then go out drinking with Pajibans all night. This lightweight has a glass of wine and three Ambien and almost dies. Pussy.)

Whatever. Parker figures out that she was giving him clues on the phone, via talking about her HALLOWEEN COSTUME, and hoofs it over. Rainie uses the last of her strength to smash the wineglass into PeterExHusband's face. The paramedics come and get her to the hospital and pump her stomach. A couple months later Parker and Rainie get married.

I need Brillo for my brain.

Title Sixty Four: Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

Hello, dahlings. It is I, Marian Keyes. If you haven't suspected before now, I have actually kidnapped your adorable little Nicole and locked her in a closet so that I could take over her blog and promote my books. Here's another one!

On a lark, my heroine, Lucy Sullivan, goes with three coworkers to visit a psychic one evening after work. The fortune teller's prediction for Lucy is that she'll be married within a year. Lucy brushes this off with a "Bah!" That is, until her coworkers' predictions start coming true, and she meets the lovable, unemployed Gus, an Irish musician who charms his way into her pants and her pockets. Perhaps Gus is undependable and fond of the drink, but he's an artiste, moppets. He is a free spirit. Meanwhile, Lucy's best friend Daniel begins dating her roommate Karen, but this doesn't bother Lucy in the least because she simply doesn't find Daniel attractive.

You may be able to guess where the story goes. (I know, but dearies, I wrote it.) Gus turns out to be a worthless cad, Lucy realizes that her father is an alcoholic and that she's been beastly to her mother for years without understanding what the latter goes through, and Daniel is a dream.

Go buy it.

Title Sixty Two: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I read this lovely book about six years ago, and I wanted to see if it still held up. I'm delighted to say that it does, but it's also so bittersweet that I think I'll wait another five or six before visiting it again.

One evening, during a birthday party for a Japanese businessman held in a poor Latin American country (in the hopes that his electronics company will build a plant in said poor country), the Vice Presidential mansion is taken by terrorists; their intended target, the President, is not in attendance, and so the group must quickly formulate a new plan. They decide to take everyone hostage, including the evening's entertainer, world-renowned opera singer Roxane Coss. The first hours following the terrorists' arrival are filled with fear, confusion, and desperation, which Patchett transfers masterfully to the page. As time passes, the Red Cross brings in a negotiator, and eventually all women are released, with the exception of Coss, who chooses to stay.

Dozens of hostages remain, and the days pass. What began as a horrifying ordeal transforms into something unique: a small community of people, from all over the world, coming together and cobbling a satisfying little existence from the circumstances. Neither the terrorists nor the government will budge, so the experience lasts for months. In the meantime, Mr. Hosokawa, the guest of honor, becomes the chess partner of one of the Generals; Carmen, one of the two female terrorists, falls in love with Gen, Hosokawa's translator and aide; Vice President Iglesias becomes close with one of the young boys in the terrorist party and begins to plan a life, afterwards, in which he can raise the boy as his son; Coss begins singing arias every day for the delight and amusement of everyone in the house. They live in a bubble, a sort of hazy limbo, where the outside world ceases to exist and all that matters is their little group. None of them think any longer about the "after," because why would they want to? Friendships are forged, relationships flourish, talents emerge, and emotional bonds form. They don't need anyone but each other.

Of course, something like this can never end well, and the climax is heartbreaking and sudden. Patchett has breathed such life into her characters that they become real people, and by the end the reader cares as much about them as they do for each other. No one wins at the end of Bel Canto, and you will close the book with a sense of melancholy and dissatisfaction, but like the arias that Roxane Coss sings, just because something is sad doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

Title Sixty One: The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Emily Gold and Christopher Harte were born, months apart, to parents who lived in adjacent houses and mothers who were best friends. Growing up, they were two halves of a whole, partners in crime, and as close as any two humans could possibly be. As they moved into the maze of their teenage years, it was only natural that Chris and Em take the next step and become a couple. After all, it's like they were made for each other, so what could be more natural or perfect?

That perfection shatters on an autumn evening when both sets of parents are called with horrifying news: they must come to the hospital immediately; there has been a shooting involving Chris and Emily. The Hartes and the Golds race to the emergency room, but it's too late for Em, killed by a gunshot wound to the head. Christopher has a scalp laceration and stitches. In the ensuing hours, tragic details will emerge: Emily and Chris went to the local park, where Chris operated the carousel in the summer, to fulfill a suicide pact. The gun that killed Emily was Dr. James Harte's. Chris fainted after Em's shot and before he could follow through.

It's not that simple. When Chris is charged with Emily's murder, an already tragic situation becomes catastrophic. What really happened that night? Melanie Gold becomes so consumed by bitterness, blame and rage that she turns on everyone, alienating not only her best friend, Gus Harte, but also her own husband Michael. James Harte withdraws into himself and avoids his wife. Chris's younger sister, Kate, is all but forgotten (the Christmas morning scene is downright painful). In the midst of all of this, defense attorney Jordan McAfee is trying to build a case that will let Christopher off the hook while asking his client to just sit down and shut up; meanwhile, Christopher needs to face the truth of his relationship with Emily, and ask himself how much she really loved him. The answer is devastating.

Picoult uses a combination of legal and emotional plotlines to frame her most successful works, and I would argue that The Pact is in her top three, along with My Sister's Keeper and Handle with Care. While moving through the present day, focusing mostly on Chris but keeping a good handle on the supporting characters, Picoult intersperses the details of Chris and Em's years together, from the day Emily was born and Chris shared her hospital bassinet, up until the night that she died and left Chris behind. In the meantime, everyone tries to put together the pieces of what, exactly, happened. Too many variables don't add up - the trajectory of the bullet, Emily's demeanor, her future prospects as a very talented artist - to label her death a suicide; however, if Chris loves Em as much as he, and everyone else, claims, he could never have killed her, because he doesn't want to live without her. Slowly, secrets are rescued from their hidden corners and pockets, and the answers eventually come together in a moving scene that has Christopher taking the stand in his own defense. The outcome and the answers are completely unbelievable, but they fit the novel to perfection. There is no happy ending, and the truth hurts everyone, but it's fitting. Life isn't always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it's a cold marble headstone and regret.

Title Sixty: The Last Cowgirl by Jana Richman

I actually read this book months ago, and then re-read it after that. I'll put it on the stack of books to be reviewed, and then I take it off again and set it aside. I don't know why, but I just feel like I won't be able to do the book justice when I write about it. Then I realized that I need to get my ass in gear on this Challenge, so I resolved to do it. I apologize in advance, because the book deserves more than I'm about to give it. I just...I don't know how. I'm not that good.

Dickie Sinfield (only her father calls her by her given name of Darlene) had a normal suburban girlhood in Utah with manicured lawns and playing on the sidewalk in front of the house until the day her father decided that the family was going to move to a ranch outside of town so that he could follow his own childhood dream of becoming a cowboy. With the exception of Dickie's brother Heber, the family is less than enthused - Dickie misses her neighborhood and friends, her older sister Annie is horrified by the entire thing and spends her time out of the house or locked in her room, and their mother just quietly resents it. Her father's dream is only viable thanks to the efforts of two neighbors and fellow ranchers who would become more family than friends - Bev Christensen and Merv Nelson. A few years later, a local army base and the secrets beneath it would devastate all three ranchers, and Dickie would bolt for Salt Lake City as soon as she hit 18, where she would become a journalist and cut ties with her cowgirl past.

Dickie's story begins with the death of her brother Heber, an accident hushed up by the military base where he works - the same military base that played a role in the destruction of cattle herds decades earlier. Dickie is forced to confront the past in order to come to terms with Heber's death, and the story switches gracefully from the present day to Dickie's recollections of her youth, all told from her point of view. The novel ebbs and flows, unfolding at just the right pace. The plot folds in ranching, government research, environmentalism, Mormonism, family drama, friendship, betrayal, and acceptance in a fascinating way. It's not exactly a tale of redemption; it's more a tale of peace, and coming to terms with your life.

It's just so real. I think that's always been one of the best compliments I can give a book, because I want a story that I can believe in and characters I can know. I'm telling you, there is so much I'm missing here: Dickie's tumultuous relationship with Stumpy, Merv's grandson; her strained relationship with her father; the faithful details of cattle raising and ranch life; the pain of loss; Dickie's spiteful best friend Holly; the residents of Ganoa county and their uneasy acceptance of the military presence that provides jobs yet always casts a shadow of potential disaster. I just don't know how to incorporate all of my thoughts. This book is layered and thought-provoking and insightful and emotional. It's the book that any aspiring writer wants to create. It's lovely. I probably haven't made a very convincing argument here, because I'm babbling, but The Last Cowgirl is a gem. I hope that Richman keeps writing, because she has a fan here.

Title Fifty Eight: Being Committed by Anna Maxted

Yes, again with the British chick lit. You shut your mouth when you're talking to me.

Hannah Lovekin prides herself on her lack of emotion; she believes that it makes her a good detective, and serves her well enough in her private life. The first sign of trouble comes when her boyfriend, Jason, proposes to her on a hotel bathroom floor, and she turns him down. This leads him to turn around and propose to his neighbor Lucy, which then makes Hannah decide she wants him back, even though he's kind of a puss. "Encouraged" by her father Roger to reconcile with Jason, Hannah goes through a sort of test course proposed by Jason in order to facilitate a reunion - she needs to be more feminine (the novel is written in the first person, and the description of a Brazilian had me putting down the book so that I could wipe away tears of laughter), she needs to learn to cook, she has to attend therapy in order to be more emotionally open, and she needs to find some closure with her ex-husband, Jack. The last proves the most difficult, since Jack left Hannah five months after they got married, at age twenty, because he believed that she cheated on him. Hannah has to spin a complicated web when she realizes that she's still in love with Jack, but needs to break off her engagement to Jason - he asked again after the Brazilian and the spray tan and the haircut and the dinner she made - in a delicate manner and return him to Lucy.

Things start to fall apart. Lies begin to spread, and with them truths come out. Memories of her own mother's affair, twenty-five years earlier, start pushing their way into Hannah's brain. She begins to see the people around her for who they really are: her parents, her brother Oliver and his wife Gabrielle, Jack, and her best friend Martine. Hannah starts feeling and it freaks her right the fuck out, but there's nothing she can do about it, and she finally begins to grow up.

Being Committed, like Maxted's other books, is a fast, fun read with a great central theme and a well-developed cast of characters. As the story branches out, it never becomes unwieldy; it just seems to evolve naturally. Maxted mixes humor with levity and creates an overall enjoyable experience. I dig it, and I'll read it again. And again.

Title Fifty Four: The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

Guess what? House wrote a book! I had to buy it. Those sexy blue eyes were just gazing at me from the back cover, whispering, "Oh Nicole, I've been waiting for you. Take me home." So I did.

I didn't expect it to be a great work of literature, and it's not. But what The Gunseller is, is a fun, fast, twisty romp of a spy thriller. Thomas Lang, ex-Scots Guard and general layabout, was drifting along just fine until the day he was offered a large sum of money to kill a wealthy businessman. Lang, of course, doesn't want the job, thank you very much, but he gets sucked into a tangled scheme involving arms dealers, terrorists, the CIA, a groundbreaking new model of fighter helicopter, and a pretty girl before he can even open a fresh bottle of Scotch. Blackmailed on several fronts, Lang is forced to be a bad guy, which he manages to do pretty well, but not without several layers of guilt weighing on his conscience and making him determined to find a way to flip the script on the guys holding the reins.

Honestly, the novel is a blast. The conversational tone made me picture Laurie, sitting in a leather armchair with a drink at his elbow, just spinning out this yarn while we relaxed in front of a fire on a chilly day. Lang is a fantastic protagonist, just a sort of everyman with some specially-acquired military skills who would prefer to mind his own business but has just a little more under the surface than you would expect. The plot double-crosses and then twists back on itself, but it's never too complicated to follow, with just enough sex and violence thrown in. The dialogue is organic and snappy and the characters given the right bit of nuance to make them interesting without taking over.

Go ahead, try it. Those eyes are begging you.

Title Fifty Three: The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Y'all, I love this book. As in, I would like to have adorable little babies with it. It's just so gorgeous and full of life. Henry and Clare's love story is so beautiful, and so breathtakingly painful, that you just want to crawl into the pages and watch it unfold before your eyes. The truest testament to Niffenegger's skill as a writer is that she makes that possible. Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire DeTamble are real people to me; they're old friends whom I love and can't bear to let go, and the end cracks my heart a little more each time I read it.

To sum: Henry is a time traveller. Not a TARDIS sort of time traveller; rather, he has some genetic malfunction wherein he disappears from the present and finds himself in various times and places. Nothing fantastical like 14th century France or present-day Mars, but it could be a parking garage in Chicago in winter, the Field Museum at night twenty years earlier, or the Meadow at the Abshire home during Clare's childhood. Henry can never tell how long he'll be gone or when he'll come back, and it's Clare's curse that she must wait for him, and that she can never follow.

Clare and Henry met when she was only six, and he materialized in her favorite play spot. Henry was already grown. Throughout her childhood, Clare is visited by various Henrys from the future, a future where the two have already married. As she grows older, Clare falls in love with this man, and there is never anyone else for her. One day, looking for information at the library where Henry works, twenty-year-old Clare sees him and the pieces of her life begin to click into place. Henry hasn't met her yet, but their fate is sealed. Within hours they are lovers, and within months they are married. As they settle into married life, Clare begins to see the magnitude of their situation, but it's what she signed on for. Despite the awful limbo in which she must exist, Clare loves Henry absolutely, and he loves her with the same ferocious one-mindedness. They can only belong to each other. I swear, the love just bleeds off the page, but it's not sappy or overly sentimental. It just is.

You've got these two people who want nothing more in the world than each other, but they know that they have to be careful and grab what they can while they can, because time is so fluid and they never know when it's going to run out. The narrative should be jerky, with its constant flashbacks and -forwards, but it's not; it's beautifully seamless and smoothly undulating. You can't help but drift along on the current. I even love the ending, which is so bittersweet, but again brings such a sense of reality to what should be an absurd premise. Nothing is perfect, nothing is forever, but when you have something beautiful, hold onto it with all you've got.

Title Fifty Two: Vision in White by Nora Roberts

Shut up.

Four friends run a wedding planning business in Connecticut. Sassy red-headed photog Mac has no use for commitment, but she's great with the brides. She has a lot of baggage from her childhood and her parents, who treat marriage like it's a hand of bridge. Her mother blackmails her emotionally and her father ignores her. She just wants, as my friend Lauren would say, "a hot guy to bone."

Enter Carter, brother of a bride. He had a crush on Mac in high school, and he surprises her when she falls for him. He's an English teacher, back at the old alma mater, and he's bookish, smart, careful, and thoughtful - all the things Mac doesn't want. But folks, this is mass market paperback romance, so what do you think happens?

Mac and Carter fall in love. Wildly, madly, passionately. The sex is earth-shattering. Angels weep. Mac is able to toss aside her baggage and leap into the arms of her man. He asks, she says yes. Fin.

I needed a break from Anna Karenina, okay?

Title Fifty One: Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted

Oh, British chick lit, how I love thee. Like candyfloss for my brain, you are. Maxted takes what could be a light, fluffy, and completely mindless story and gives it a heavy, serious layer underneath, and it works beautifully.

Holly Appleton believes in love. Even though she's just split up with her fiance, Nick, a grown man who makes a living by dressing as Mr. Elephant at children's parties and Febrezes his feet when he's too lazy to shower - which is most of the time - she is an eternal optimist and runs a hip little dating firm called Girl Meets Boy in London. In order to help Holly get over Nick (and give Nick some incentive to move out of their house), Holly's coworkers, sister Claudia and actor Nigel, convince her to go on a date with a prospective client. Little does Holly know that opening the door to Stuart Marshall, a successful lawyer with a ridiculous sense of self-worth and entitlement, will be more disastrous than she could have imagined; one night, after seeing Holly home from a party, Stuart rapes her on the kitchen floor. Nick walks in during the middle and promptly moves out. Holly spirals into a dark denial and depression and nearly runs her business and life into the ground while keeping her secret locked away.

Maxted has a gifted touch with the material. All of the characters, save Stuart, are likeable and real. She keeps the devastatingly serious subject of the rape in perspective at all times while letting the story unfold from Holly's perspective. It is never treated lightly, and the steps that Holly must take with the police and finally therapy are described frankly without being heavy-handed. The reader almost gets a sense of being in Holly's skin as she moves through her existence in the weeks and months following "that night," going through the denial, shame, fear, hope, and cautious return of optimism with her. The mood is tense in just the right places, with an unexpected turn for the better here and there as Holly realizes that she is surrounded by love and support.

There are times when she retreats, but she always moves forward again, buoyed by her friends and family. The plot is made more substantial and realistic by the supporting characters and their experiences with life: Nick, who discovers a family secret; Claudia, who is keeping a piece of herself separate; Holly's parents, who turn out to be more than she ever expected; Rachel, Holly's best friend who grew up in a posh English family but is delightfully filthy; and Nigel, who is so theatrical that it's nearly impossible to believe he's straight. The point is, life goes on, and Maxted makes that the central theme of the novel. Even when your world is ripped to shreds and you find yourself in a strange place where up is down and the sky is green, you have to keep going, because that's what life is about. It's about the good and the bad, and keeping each in perspective, and making the most of what you have. It's lovely.

Title Fifty: Black Hills by Nora Roberts

Black Hills is just what you expect from a Nora Roberts book. Falling under the category of "romantic suspense," you've got Lil and Cooper, childhood pals who become teen lovers before going their separate ways. Lil fulfills her dream of opening a wildlife refuge in the Black Hills of South Dakota, while Coop makes his own way first as a New York cop and then as a private investigator before returning to South Dakota to care for his aging grandparents and taking over the family farm and horse business. Lil is still angry with Cooper for leaving her behind all those years ago and refusing her love, and she doesn't buy his excuse that he had to become his own person before he could be anything to her. Lil, for her part, doesn't want to admit that if Cooper had stayed she would probably have given up her dreams of being a world-renowned big-cat expert. When a series of grisly crimes leads to a connection to a string of missing and murdered persons, Lil decides she'll let Cooper take care of her after all, at least in bed. The bad guy turns out to be a whack job pseudo-Indian with a grudge against Lil for "desecrating the land" or some shit, since he thinks she, as someone with Native American blood, should be building shrines to Crazy Horse instead of running a refuge. Eventually Lil and Cooper fall back in love, the bad dude gets caught after almost killing Lil, and everyone is happy. That's how these things go.

The good: a lot of solid and interesting detail and description of Lil's field, likeable characters and loveable animals, and a decent backstory for Cooper, who is the son of a wealthy NYC lawyer who cut off his son when the latter refused to follow in his footsteps.

The bad: it's predictable as hell, everything ends in love and marriage (my GOD, does everyone have to rush to the altar these days?), and I tend to prefer Roberts novels where the villain isn't revealed until the end, because I enjoy trying to figure out who it is and prefer a surprise ending.

I'll read it again, and I've already lent it to my mom, who is solely responsible for getting me hooked on Nora in the first place when I was a teen. Blame her for my mass-market tendencies.

Title Forty Eight: Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson

Sweet cracker sandwich, this book is so depressing that it should come with a trial pack of Zoloft. The entire narrative takes on the tone of the damp, dark, mossy Oregonian forest in which it's set. It has a claustrophobic and chilly feel and frankly, has one of the most unsympathetic cast of characters ever. I'm not saying it's not good; it's certainly serviceable and has an interesting premise, but it gave me the feeling that if I ever had the misfortune of finding myself in North Fork, Oregon, surrounded by these people, I'd want to put the town in my rearview mirror as fast as I possibly could.

Ann Holmes is a teenage runaway who left home after being raped continually by her mother's boyfriend. She lives in a campsite and picks and sells wild mushrooms for money. One day during her picking, she is overcome by a vision of the Blessed Mother, who instructs her to return and to deliver certain messages to mankind. It's all familiar to a reader like me, who went to Catholic school for eighteen years and is well-versed in the stories of Fatima and Lourdes. At any rate, Ann is soon a celebrity on the Marian devotion circuit, and she's essentially taken advantage of by everyone: the campground neighbor who sees Ann as her moneymaking ticket to a winter in Mexico; the thousands of fanatics who throng to the woods and beg Ann for favors and intentions; the bumbling priest of the miserly local parish who tries, ineffectually, to seduce her. Woven throughout is the story of a pathetic community that has fallen victim to a sharp decline in the logging industry (the derogatory references to liberal treehuggers and the spotted owl abound), along with the tale of Tom Cross, a former logger whose life has disintegrated after his son was left a quadriplegic in a logging accident for which Tom blames himself - he was trying to teach his son how to be a man, not a pussy or a faggot. Tom and his fellow townspeople are essentially Northwestern rednecks: they hate women, Jews, gays, Indians, Asians, and pretty much anyone who isn't a white male quaffing draft beer at one of the local taverns. It's with Cross that Guterson gets sloppy; while I understand using one person to illustrate a human microcosm of the town, it becomes tiresome reading about Tom's preoccupation with sex and thoughts of revenge on everyone who has somehow wronged him.

Back to the larger picture. Ann continues to have visions and insists that a church is to be built on the site, but she's nothing but a pawn to the people around her, and the story concludes with a morose ending. All in all, a decent effort, but it would be vastly improved by enthusiastic pruning of the Cross story and a seventy percent reduction in the sexual themes, allusions and metaphors. (Reading about a guy eating a hamburger with much chewing and "labial noise" put me off my appetite for several hours; I also prefer books that don't reference the scent of a woman's nethers more times than I can count on one hand.)

Title Forty Seven: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

The latest installment in the Thursday Next series is really a gift to fans of the first four books; Fforde did a lovely job of tying up all loose ends in Thursday's story at the end of Something Rotten and could have gone the rest of his career without ever returning to the character, but for the fact that book fans can be just as rabid as any other kind and they wanted some more Thursday (I include myself among this number). First Among Sequels jumps ahead fourteen years from the end of Something Rotten, landing in 2002 and focusing on Thursday and Landen's life post-SpecOps - it's been disbanded - as they raise their family and try to get along with normalcy; Thursday runs a flooring-and-carpet business along with some other ex-SpecOps pals, such as Spike Stoker, Stig the Neanderthal, and Bowden Cable. It's all really a front for the fact that the gang is still involved in their old tricks, something that Thursday hides from Landen and the kids, as well as the fact that she is also still pulling double duty in the BookWorld at Jurisfiction as an agent. Meanwhile, Thurs and Landen are trying to figure out why Friday doesn't show any interest in the ChronoGuard (one of the few remaining SpecOps divisions) even though he's pretty much destined to be its shining star. There are also appearances by past characters like Joffy, Aornis Hades and the Minotaur, along with Thursday's counterparts in the BookWorld, the result of her having books written about her after her previous escapades. Even Goliath comes in again. All in all, it's really just fun for the fans with a chance to return to an old favorite character.

If any of the above made sense to you and maybe caused you to squee a bit, I suggest you pick it up. If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, move along.

Title Forty Six: The Stand by Stephen King

I've never read King before; I'm not much for horror, in either books or movies. Basically, I'm kind of a puss. However, I was browsing my sister's bookshelves one night and saw The Stand among the spines (one of her boyfriend's contributions to their little library) and I thought, Hey, why not? I wasn't sure if I would like it, but hot damn did I.

When an accident at a California military base lets loose a bioweapon, one soldier escapes and bolts home to retrieve his wife and child, completely unaware that he's carrying the most contagious and terrifying plague known to man. As the family drives east, they end up crashing into a gas station in Texas, infecting everyone in their path before they drop dead of what becomes known as the "superflu." It spreads across the country like wildfire, wiping out millions in a few short weeks. The victims die grisly deaths as the military attempts to control the situation and fails miserably. A tiny segment of the population, somehow immune, are left behind as the world around them essentially grinds to a halt. There's no electricity; roads are choked with cars filled with bodies rotting in the summer heat; dogs and horses die as well. Civilization as it exists in 1990 disappears as the survivors attempt to figure out what it all means. They become pawns in an epic struggle between good and evil, as they dream about two people: Mother Abigail, an ancient black woman who lives on a farm in Nebraska and becomes the central figure for the good guys, and Randall Flagg, a demon who sets up shop in Las Vegas and creates a community of amoral misfits and those who decide that their chances are better on his side. While Flagg, also called the Dark Man and the Walkin Dude, gets the power back on and starts assembling a collection of worker drones and nuclear weaponry, the motley crew of goodies make their way first to Nebraska to unite under Mother Abigail and then move on to set up the Free Zone in Boulder, Colorado, where God has directed Mother Abigail to take her people to prepare for the final showdown. Eventually, a small group of Free Zoners set out, under Mother Abigail's instructions, for Las Vegas and a confrontation with Flagg.

King uses this massive work to illustrate a grand sociopolitical question: what would it be like if everything just stopped and you were left behind? His characters are amazingly real and nuanced - Frannie Goldsmith, a pregnant college girl from Maine; Larry Underwood, a rock star from New York City who was running from a bad scene in L.A.; Stu Redman, a redneck from the small town in Texas where the original victim died; Nick Andros, a deaf-mute who goes from being a social outcast to a leader. At nearly 1200 pages, it's almost impossible for me to summarize this huge novel, but the narrative is so far-ranging and well-planned that it's almost as impossible to believe that one person could have created it. I never once grew bored, nor did my curiosity wane as I ventured deeper into the story. It's frightening because it could happen, and it made me wonder what kind of person I would be if I survived something so devastating. The good versus evil thing wasn't as important to me, but it provided a decent context and motivation for the plot and actions of the characters. I'm glad I read it. I don't think it's turned me into a King fan, because I'm still afraid of almost everything, but it was worth the while.

Title Forty Five: The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits

So imagine that I'm browsing in a bookstore, or maybe the book section at Target. I notice you checking out The Uses of Enchantment. I watch for a minute while you read the back, sense your hesitation, and then see you say to yourself, "Eh, seems interesting. I'll take it."

Now you see a slightly manic blonde hauling ass towards you making frantic waving motions. When did they start letting homeless women with well-maintained highlights hang out in Barnes and Noble? you think. At that moment I arrive in front of you, my ponytail slightly disheveled, panting a bit from my trek across the store. (I should really cut down on the cigs.) "Put it back!" I cry. You wonder why I'm so vehement. What could be so wrong with a book whose blurb promises a tale of Mary Veal, who disappeared from her posh New England prep school one day after field hockey practice and reappears a few weeks later with no visible injury or trauma save a case of amnesia. Was it true, or did she fake the whole thing? What repercussions will the event have on Mary's family, therapists, and Mary herself? Why wouldn't you want to check this out?

I'll tell you why. It's a hot fucking mess. Julavits is aiming for literary and instead turns out a disjointed, confusing, and subpar book that tries to blend three different "narratives" - "What Might Have Happened," a convoluted account of Mary's experience with a kidnapper/fellow fugitive/pervy old dude who supposedly suffers from amnesia himself; "Notes" from her first therapist, who goes on to write a book detailing what he considers Mary's entire fabrication and which ends up destroying his career when he's accused of improper patient conduct with Mary by a feminazi colleague; and "West Salem," the events that follow the funeral of Mary's mother fourteen years to the day from Mary's disappearance (Mary's mother, incidentally, refused to see her before she died, and spent most of her life obsessed with an ancestor accused of being a witch). Is that confusing enough you? Congratulations, now you know how I felt when I read the book. Beyond the fact that Julavits has three concepts that never come together, there is no real resolution. You never find out why Mary took off with the guy (if that's what actually happened). You never understand why Mary let the feminazi take over and trash her therapist. You certainly never get any sort of revelations or conclusions from grownup Mary. It's never even made clear who the dude in the car was. It ends abruptly; it doesn't even whimper to an end. The whole thing is like watching a fly buzz between a window and a screen until it drops dead, but somehow less entertaining.

Put the book down. Walk away. I promise not to stalk you through the store.

Title Forty Four: Love The One You're With by Emily Giffin

When it comes to Emily Giffin, I have very definite opinions. I adored Something Borrowed, enjoyed Something Blue, and loathed Baby Proof. My expectations towards Love The One You're With were mediocre, and they were just about met.

Ellen had a great life; she married Andy, the brother of her college roommate/best friend, she started a great photography career in New York, she was welcomed into the wealthy Atlanta family of her husband, and she was happy, happy, happy until the day she saw her ex Leo on a street corner. Instead of ignoring it, or brushing it off casually, she had to make a huge deal about it, sneaking meetings and calls and texts, hiding it from everyone except her older sister Suzanne, who still lived in their hometown of Pittsburgh. Ellen needed *closure* from Leo, the one who broke her heart and got away, the one who knew her inside and out and just ditched her one New Year's Day. Meanwhile, Andy asked Ellen if she would like to move to Atlanta so he could join his father's law firm and be closer to his family, including sister Margot, who is pregnant with her first child. Ellen voiced no doubts and away the two went, with Ellen realizing how stifled she felt in their new mansion, or social circle, or life. I have no sympathy for Ellen; she should have spoken up. Instead she sabotaged her marriage, reignited her relationship with Leo, and burned bridges with her best friend and husband in the process, only to realize that she made a colossal mistake on an ill-fated trip back to New York to work on an assignment with Leo, a writer. Luckily for Ellen, Andy realized how much he loved her, and how stifled she felt, and he took her back, although I frankly don't think she deserved it for being such a selfish cow. Andy wasn't innocent but Ellen, a grown woman, should have tried to deal with the situation constructively. Instead she nearly imploded everything and manages to keep hold in the nick of time. A compromise is reached and everyone gets a happily ever after.

Sweet Christ, what shit. With the exception of Something Borrowed, Giffin has a unique talent for creating completely unlikable characters and constructing situations that are so bland they make plain yogurt look delectable. In my opinion she's a one trick pony and I hope someone stops publishing her dreck.

Title Forty Two: The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

I'm pretty sure I read this back when it came out and caused a stir, but I wasn't certain (probably not a good sign) so I thought, "Eh, why not?" Wow. Seriously? This book wasn't funny. It was just sad. I only had sympathy for one character, and he got royally screwed in the end.

Nanny is a grad student in child development at NYU who lives in a shoebox apartment and works as a nanny to afford said education and living quarters. She gets picked up in Central Park one day by Mrs. X, who wants her to watch darling Grayer a few days a week. Predictably, it turns into Nanny-as-indentured-servant as Mrs. X flits from salon appointment to charity function and Mr. X fucks a girl from the Chicago office. Nanny falls for Hot Rich Guy Who Goes To Harvard And Lives In The Xes' Building. Grayer, whom Nanny calls Grover, is largely ignored by everyone but her. She is the only shining light in his existence. (Wait, I just heard Handel's Messiah.) Of course, she gets too close to Grayer and Mrs. X fires her while Grayer wails in the background. The end.

It wasn't cute. It was about a bunch of self-centered New York assholes who essentially give birth to expensive accessories, whom they hand off to students and immigrants. Maybe someone should have advised McLaughlin and Kraus to stick with childcare.

Title Forty: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Laurel Hawthorne makes beautiful quilts, but she always puts in hidden pockets and secret compartments where she places something ugly - a bird's skull; a broken tooth. It's her way of acknowledging that everything beautiful has something dark inside, but she won't let it show. Laurel lives her life much the same way, tucking away her sordid family relatives in DeLop, Alabama and the ghost of her pervert uncle Marty, keeping those things separate from the picture-perfect life that she lives with her husband and daughter in a gated community in Victorianna, Florida. Everything is orderly and tidy until the hot summer night that another ghost comes to visit Laurel, the first she's seen in the thirteen years since she moved to Victorianna - her daughter Shelby's best friend Molly, who has drowned in the Hawthornes' pool. In order to find the truth about Molly's death, Laurel has to open the secret compartments and expose the ugliness to the light of day.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming was surprising; it was far better than I expected and I found myself engrossed in solving the mystery of Molly's death. Laurel brings her sister, Thalia, to Victorianna to help; Thalia is the polar opposite of Laurel, an actress who is married to a gay man, a woman who lives life messily and loudly and brashly. Thalia cannot understand how Laurel can exist in her tidy little world, but Thalia has the courage to root out the truth that Laurel lacks. The novel is peopled with interesting, realistic characters, such as Laurel's husband David, a placid computer programmer who loathes Thalia; simple Bet Clemmens, a teen cousin from DeLop who has come to visit the Hawthornes (Laurel's own little charity project); Stan Webelow, a neighborhood man whom Laurel suspects in Molly's death; and Laurel's parents, especially her mother, who came from the poverty and squalor of DeLop but has managed to insulate herself beneath a veneer of Southern respectability and charm. Jackson also shows the secret side of the upper-middle class suburbs, with its alcoholics, cheats, and liars, contrasting it with the outright crime, drug addiction, illiteracy and hopelessness of DeLop.

Jackson keeps the pace moving as she weaves the threads that Laurel will pick apart as the days following Molly's death pass. She also cleverly uncovers Laurel's past and deftly guides the reader through a sort of journey both forward and back, a plot device that can often feel contrived or heavy-handed when used by other authors but not here. Laurel is the center and she needs to look both behind her and ahead if she is going to find her way out of the pocket within which she has hidden herself. In trying to protect her family, Laurel has frozen them, and Molly's death is the catalyst for Laurel's realization that it's no way to live. She has tried so hard to not be Thalia that she's more a sketch than a painting. There is only one awkward scene, which Jackson resolves nicely enough, even though it was a bit out of place with the rest of the book. All in all, a definite recommendation if you're looking for something with some substance and flair.