This novel is set in a time not yet popularized in historical novels. Kate Quinn, best known for her World War II novels, The Alice Network, The Rose Code and The Huntress, ventures into the McCarthy years in this intriguing novel. It is the time of the Red Scare, when people are losing jobs, fear for their safety, and face loss of reputation for their ideas and associations.
There have been many novels recently written about the Holocaust—its devastation, its unimaginable cruelty, its heroes, its far-reaching effects into the future. And unfortunately, many of the tropes of those times resonate in our world right now. I try not to read them. Family members who survived are each heroes to me in their own way and their lives were forever shaped by what they experienced. In its way, this novel demonstrates this.
Sara Hussein is a woman whose life requires juggling multiple balls. She is an archivist, a mother of toddler twins, and is for the most part happily married. She had been having trouble sleeping. A working mother with twin babies. Who wouldn't welcome a harmless device to help deepen the little sleep she was getting. It was a no brainer and decided to have a device implanted that promised to improve and deepen her sleep. Dreamscape, a tech company, marketed this as a sleep aid but is, in fact, sharing its data. No one was more surprised than Sara.
In this latest novel by Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, she explores the idea of dream count, a backwards look at the past in the hope of arriving at a better future. If the past is filled with so much unrealized potential, how can the failed affairs of old be transformed?
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Cape Cod. I’ve been going there for summer vacations since I was a child. For years, my husband and I have made the trek to Provincetown, the excuse being the Tennessee Williams Festival. True we love the festival but it is only a solid reason not … Continue reading Cape Cod’s Literary Gems: ‘The House on Oyster Street’ Review
It’s hard to know where to begin talking about this book. Its breath is massive. It is the story of three characters, two rivers, the Tigris and Thames, and an ancient poem. And beneath it all, it connects us all through a single drop of water. Where else can you find a story that begins … Continue reading There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Single Drop of Water Connects Then and Now
The main protagonist, Jane Flanagan, had a troubled childhood dominated by a single alcoholic mother, and a sister she doesn’t connect to. But she has seemingly risen above it to become an archivist at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. Residual behaviors, unacknowledged yet ever present, rear their ugly heads at a time when all should have been well. She engages in behavior that may cost her both her ascending career and marriage.
This book was a surprise. Given the title—Happiness Falls—I expected much less. Or maybe, just different. A more typical mystery perhaps layered with family dynamics. Instead, this was a surprising meditation on what constitutes happiness, the possibilities of non-verbal speech, and acknowledging qualities that make us different be it because of race, language, or basic … Continue reading Happiness Falls: More than a Mystery
If this is your introduction into the world of Ruth Reichl, you are in for a sumptuous treat. Her books, whether memoir or fiction, bring the senses alive. This book is a modern-day fairy tale. The reader is transported to a world of taste, smell, and an insider’s look of a Paris we all wish we could magically inhabit.
The book’s beginning is somewhat deceiving. As the story opens, we meet an older man, widowed ten years in a semi crisis state. He’s noticing he’s somewhat forgetful. He's a bit panicked because the housekeeper he has relied on since his wife’s death has had a personal emergency and doesn’t know when she’ll be back. A rookie meter reader comes to the house and Baumgartner takes him down the poorly lit basement stairs and has a bad fall and struggles with the injury without help. So starts the story. My impression was that this was a doddering man on his way down.
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