My parents got divorced when I was 9. I was an only child but my father’s second wife had kids from a previous marriage. After their marriage, my father moved to the other side of the country. For me, that was a big culture shock and I was endlessly fascinated with the mechanics of sibling interactions. I had never had to “call” a seat for a car ride before. It was like I had landed on the moon for a month every summer. This was in […]
“She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.”
Bel Canto opens at the birthday party of Japanese industrial titan Katsumi Hosokawa in the small, unnamed South American country that is trying to woo Mr. Hosokawa into building his next factory in their country. When Mr. Hosokawa declines the invitation, because he has no intentions of bringing his business there, the host country persuades famed opera soprano Roxanne Coss to sing at the party which in turn convinces opera fanatic Mr. Hosokawa to attend. Shortly after Roxanne Coss finishes her set the light goes out […]
It’s a Fine Line Between Transformative and Toxic
When my book club chose Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett’s memoir about her friendship with fellow writer, Lucy Grealy, I had mixed feelings. I read the book when it first came out in 2004 and had read Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, a number of years before that. I remember that I found Patchett’s book interesting but also disturbing but the exact reasons why had faded from my memory. A few months ago, I thought I might fake my way through the evening by […]
Not as exciting as I expected
The book’s summary made it sound like there was going to be a lot more intrigue and many more characters. It talks about how one incident impacts generations of these two families but, really, it’s just the parents at their children. So from the get-go, this is not a “generational novel” (like Salt Houses which, yes, I am still going on about). It’s just a drama. It is set in Virginia but it starts in California so it’s completely okay if you’re confused on that at […]
This had so much potential…
I liked Commonwealth but I think I could have loved it. In the past the Cousins and Keatings are brought together one fateful day at a Christening party when Mr Cousins kisses Mrs Keating. After a few years of secret rendezvouses the Keatings and Cousins officially merge into one big, messy unit. This combined family situation begins to dissolve when one of the six children dies in an accident that is slowly revealed to the reader. “He realized then what he had known from the first minute […]
The Repercussions of Drugging Unwitting Children (And Other Things)
This book was one of those that I liked, but I also didn’t much like it, or at least I didn’t really like or understand the characters in it. Yes, that’s it exactly. I didn’t understand a single one of the many characters in this book. And that’s not entirely my fault. In Commonwealth, one of the children of a blended family falls in love with a much older writer and ends up telling him stories about her childhood. And he ends up writing […]
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