Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian

 Chris Bohjalian's newest novel focuses on the murder and apparent suicide of a couple in a small town in Vermont. The husband has a known history of abuse, and the case seems to be clear in the beginning. The story begins through the voice of the local pastor who has a secret history with the family.  The voices also shift to a young female author who writes about angels, an assistant prosecutor, and the fifteen year-old daughter of the deceased couple.  Bohjalian does an excellent job shifting the perspectives and changing the reader's feelings for each character along with the shifts.  I had hoped that he would shift back and revisit the earlier characters through their own eyes, but that's not the case.  Regardless, it was a great novel. 4.5/5

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

book description:
Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell.

In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.

This was a very enjoyable southern story loaded with eccentric characters.  It starts off with the sad and dysfunctional life that CeeCee has with her parents, but soon becomes a cozy and funny read.  It's full of positive and hopeful messages.  A very good book-4/5 

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to pull this book off of my shelf, but it was such a treat spending my Sunday reading this in one sitting.  It is a collection of short stories, some taking place in America and others taking place in India.  I had my favorites, but I enjoyed them all.  A Temporary Matter and A Real Durwan were the most moving, as well as the most heartbreaking, in my opinion.  I always feel like I am left with unanswered questions when I read short stories, and maybe that's what has kept the book on my shelf waiting.  I had some here as well, but I only think it's because I wanted more or I just wanted a happier ending for a few characters who I grew attached to very quickly.  Don't miss this book. 5/5

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Book flap description: On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son.

Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to adopt a child after making the wrenching discovery that she will never have one of her own. When she and her husband, Krishnan, see a photo of the baby with the gold-flecked eyes from a Mumbai orphanage, they are overwhelmed with emotion. Somer knows life will change with the adoption but is convinced that the love they already feel will overcome all obstacles.

Interweaving the stories of Kavita, Somer, and the child that binds both of their destinies, Secret Daughter poignantly explores the emotional terrain of motherhood, loss, identity, and love, as witnessed through the lives of two families—one Indian, one American—and the child that indelibly connects them.

I loved this book.  The story offers fascinating characters, especially those of the two mothers involved in the adoption and it's aftermath.  There were characters that I started off hating, and ended up really understanding and feeling compassion for.  I also found that the author brought readers to different parts of the society of India in a readable way that is sometimes hard to find.


I would suggest this book to anyone who wants to try something about the culture and history if India.  Like Thrity Umrigar, Shilpi Somaya Gowda captures it beautifully.  I would rate this a 5/5.

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's newest novel is about Jacob, a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome who is obsessed with forensic analysis and follows crime scenes on his police scanner.  He is accused of a brutal murder, and his mother is forced to do anything that she can to make people understand Jacob and his autism.

As a mother of an autistic child, I usually avoid fiction that focuses on it.  It's either too frustrating or too emotional for me.  However, I am a Jodi Picoult fan so I went ahead.  I think that she handled the topic of autism well.  I related to the mother, and I think that her descriptions of autistic behavior were well done and not stereotyped.  The storyline kept me reading even if it was somewhat predictable. What I do not understand is why she decided to end it the way that she did.  I'm not going to give spoilers, but I will be surprised if I find any reviews that praise the conclusion of this one.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

I really went back and forth on how much I was enjoying this book.  The first person plural voice was something that I liked a lot at first, but it was also a key thing that irritated me closer to the end.  Were we ever going to find out who the narrator was?  Because the reader seems to be included in the we, does that make the reader part of the story or farther removed from it because we can't see the identity of the narrator? At times I found it to be hilarious, especially early on with the story of the "buckshelves".  There were several incidents that had me laughing quite a bit.  Other times I found myself to be quite bored.  I wonder if the fact that I have never worked in this type of office environment took away some of my ability to relate to the characters.  It does get a little more serious for a while, and I think those were some of the better parts of the book. I liked it, but I think I'll probably forget this one very soon.

Thaw by Fiona Robyn

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.

Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com/

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These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.

I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun.


Continue reading at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com/

Fiona Robyn