Tom Lake

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tom Lake was a braided story (then and now) of a mother relating her glamorous past life as an actor to her clamoring daughters. Having a story run in two parts can be frustrating to the eager reader. It is like looking for the sexy parts or the who done it section. In this story, you're curious as to what happened to him, to them, and how she ended up with a cherry farmer. The characters are all beautiful, compatible and sympathetic; the dogs are sweet; the cherries are relentless in their need for harvest. The story has good forward motion riffing off the play, Our Town. But I wanted a bit more of an edge. I wanted to have at least one character who does not defies the odds and I guess that was "the golden boy, Duke." But there is a lot of happy family story before Duke's failings become evident, and I would have liked more reflection from the once-smitten mother to hold my interest. It's still Ann Patchett and that's worth a lot, but not my favorite of her titles. Take me back to Bel Canto.

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The Children's Bach

The Children's Bach by Helen Garner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My new favorite author is Helen Garner. The Children's Bach is an antipodean (a chance to use that word!) domestic novel of parents and children, friends and lovers, siblings and spouses, beautifully written, loosely structured, not long but an honest examination of the social freedoms of the eighties with musical references. Effort is required to keep track of the eight major characters. It's a good companion read to The Spare Room which covers friendship and concerns about mortality at a later stage in life.

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Abbess of Crewe

Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Sisters, be sober. Sisters, be vigilant" A slim, comic satire harkening back to Watergate isThe Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark in which a renegade nun named Felicity dallies with a Jesuit in the garden of the Abbey, is excommunicated and seeks revenge by exposing her order to sabotage, blackmail and undo publicity. Delightfully wry, the Abbess remarks: "Sisters, let me tell you a secret. I would rather sink fleshless to my death into the dry soil of some African or Indian plain, than go, as I hear Felicity (the randy nun) is now doing, to a psychiatrist for an anxiety-cure." Given to quoting poetry, the Abbess is a success on television but one worries when she is called to Rome with the offending tapes recorded in the Abbey.
Perfect holiday fare.

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The House of Doors

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The House of Doors touched all my buttons in a good way: beautiful writing, literary references which had me looking up bios and movies and stories of W. Somerset Maugham who is fictionalized in this novel. There was romance, murder, and an exotic locale. Tan Twan Eng keeps us moving along at a fine pace using the alternate chapter structure of Maugham, then Lesley, the storyteller. Does anyone read Maugham now? Other than his colonial racism, he's a master of description, place and people. I read The Letter and Other Stories and want to see the Bette Davis movie.

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If I Survive You

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this as a novel and was completely involved in its first chapter, but it's chapters seem to meander away in short stories while I wanted the narrative force of a novel. Writing was admirable, often funny.

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The Sarah Book

The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One critic called Scott McClanahan the Appalachian Charles Bukowski which is fitting. Described as a semi-autobiographical novel, there is much about getting drunk (with a water bottle filled with gin and two forgotten babies in the back seat as he sails along the highway), bodily fluids, camping out at Walmart, hospital tales from his estranged wife, a nurse, yet his story is engaging and very sad. There are snippets of humor but mostly it is an unflinching description of divorce, tragedy and resilience, told in beautiful melodic writing. "In one life we are dead. In one we are rich. In one we are poor. In one we are parents. But always we belong to others."

Thanks to Backlisted.fm for pointing me toward this story and to so many other books.

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The Book

The Book by Mary Ruefle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think of [Mary Ruefle|282933]'s brain scan and can't believe it's anything like mine or anyone I know. Unique and thought provoking vignettes about every imaginable subject from cashews to Jung to haikus to Dear Friends: "Then one day I picked up a magazine and read an interview with the COO (chief operating officer) of Facebook, perhaps she still is, I don't know, but she was asked how many friends she had and she said, "Over three thousand. I don't know all of them but I have met them in one shape or form." I would rather be antiquated--I would rather die--than make a statement like that. I know my friends..."and she goes on with a precise, knowing descriptions of her various friends: "I had a friend who loved apple trees and apple blossoms and apple orchards, he loved swimming in ponds and lake, and making current jam and jam from mulberries and playing the harmonica, but when he read, he loved books, he read heavy German tomes."
Or "I have a friend who believes that birds have souls but humans do not."
As Poetry Foundation's Janina Ambikapathy wrote "If this book is about recollection, and a meditation on the inevitable passing of all things, it is also about errors, cracks in our recall that switch the familiar world for one that is slightly strange. [Mary Ruefle|282933] writes about the fluctuating intensity of friendships, missed connections, and affections sent out into the world that bounce right back: “She kept calling, I didn’t pick up, and finally she stopped. I think she understood I was somehow not the same.” "The plum sat in the sun for three hours, its skin split apart and its syrup began to ooze out. When I bit into it, I thought of William Carlos Williams..."
"I am a tall person who is small and mean inside. For instance, I wake Christmas morning and begin to pack away all of my Christmas decorations."
Wave Books is a publisher to treasure as is this volume.

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