Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know. Three stars. Before I get into the meat of the book, let me explain because Lisa Genova is one of my very favorite authors. I've always enjoyed her eloquent, intelligent writing. The woman is brilliant and gifted in both the medical field and creative writing. So my real issue with the book was the language. I was distracted by the sheer number of F bombs. It cheapened the eloquent writing style I've come to expect. I buy into the idea that the use of profanity demonstrates a lack of vocabulary. Lisa Genova does not lack vocabulary. But the book is not written from her own POV. The protagonists are blue collar Bostonians - Irish American. So I get it. I get that the characters were rough around the edges. Joe is a veteran cop. That's how he talks and that's how he thinks. I'm just saying that it was distracting, particularly from an author I've loved. That said, had I known ahead of time, I still would have read the book.

The story is a raw, real look at Huntington's Disease, a genetic anomaly in the DNA that is not a respecter of persons. The book begins with Joe, a Boston cop, in his mid thirties, he demonstrate an inkling of the disease. The reader moves from Joe as he progresses in the disease, becoming more clumsy, exhibiting chorea, getting stuck in thinking errors to Katie, his daughter as she becomes paralyzed with fear of the disease. Who has it? There are 4 grown children in various stages of life. Each child has a 50% shot at carrying the gene. If you carry the gene, you develop the disease eventually. Do you get the genetic testing and find out?

Everything about Genova's story is grittingly raw and real. I have a friend who was dating a man when the genetic sequence was identified and subsequently offered to relatives of identified sufferers of Huntington Disease. I didn't know at the time why he put their relationship into a screeching halt for weeks. I didn't know the drama that was playing out in their families until later. His mother was at the point that she could no longer care for her husband and put him into assisted care. His sister, a woman I met a year earlier, was a mother of five children ranging from 11 to 2 years old. She was showing signs of the disease. She chose to be tested. She was HD positive. At the time, the children could also be tested. Yet if they tested positive, would the diagnosis preclude them from quality health insurance? Pre-existing conditions were always the loophole insurance companies used at the time. The mother of the young children deteriorated quickly and her care was pushing the young father to the brink of bankruptcy.

So basically, I read the book but I caught a preview 20 years in advance. I can't tell you what happened to the real people I described in the previous paragraph because, minus the F bombs and the geography, this book tells their story. Those who carry the gene develop the disease and it is horrible. Those who don't carry the gene never get it and don't pass it on to the next generation but they care for their loved ones and suffer with them.

So it all sounds pretty hopeless and a real downer yet I must remind you that this is an author who somehow instills hope and love of life into her characters. The book is an excellent educational vehicle for Huntington's Disease but it also provides they greatest gift an author can give. Hope.

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The writing of this book is sublime. Use of words that sound like what they mean. The descriptions of the circus are similar to The Night Circus. The story is well paced and the characters are perfectly developed. The story is intriguing and borders on too strange and weird. Yet it doesn't quite cross the line into bad weird. I kept reading for the prose. I kept reading because I wondered how it would end. I'm still uncertain if I liked the book or not.

Under the Same Blue Sky by Pamela Schoenewaldt

Under the Same Blue Sky by Pamela Schoenewaldt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second book I've read by this author and I am, once again, impressed with her writing style and vast knowledge of immigrants' struggles and challenges.

This book focuses on the German immigrants during the Great War and how they are torn between both of their countries. The German ties run deep while their American loyalty is strong. Their German country is their mother while America is their bride. Hazel is our protagonist and the story is told through her eyes. Although well written, I felt some of the story lines weren't carried to the end. I didn't understand the purpose of the blue paint, why John, and how or why she could heal. Then not. That whole sequence seemed extraneous. I would have preferred to explore Tom and his experience.

The writing style is strong but the story not as tight.

Eight Hundred Grapes: A Novel by Laura Dave

Eight Hundred Grapes: A Novel by Laura Dave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It would be easy to choose a character, give her a conflict, provide a setting, and fill in the holes with peripheral characters while telling a story. If this were true of this book, I would have been bored senseless. Particularly if the book was truly about making wine. I'll be totally honest here. I know next to nothing about wine. Give me a glass of wine and I will spray it on the first sip. Why do people purposely drink mold? Yeah, seriously a non drinker here. So you can see where I might not appreciate a story about a vineyard that makes wine.

It's not about the wine.

Dan is a scientist turned vineyard owner who knows the proper formula for a good wine, including the number of grapes to make a bottle. Jen is a symphony cellist. They fall in love and begin in 1979 with the winery, house, kids, life. Georgia is the third child with older twin brothers. Every year they turn up for the harvest where they count on traditions and the stability of the family and the business relying heavily on synchronization of events to operate in union. Synchronization is not fate but agency. Yet for a good harvest, all things must be in synchronization; the soil, weather, their health, help, and relationships.

Georgia is in a crisis as her choice of most important relationship implodes. She craves the predictable harvest and relationships. Unfortunately, every relationship is being redefined when she needs the stability. While the story is unfolding, there are snippets of what a good harvest requires. It is a delicate balance of give and take, replenishing the soil with nutrients, caring for the fruit, giving it time and space to ferment. It's not really about the wine but an analogy, so very beautiful, about caring for relationships.

Here are a few gems: "Thing is, either way we cut it, we shouldn't test the people we love... Regardless of what they did or didn't do, we're the ones who feel like we failed."

"If what I thought was connecting us - honesty, friendship, a deep understanding, - was gone suddenly, then what was between us?"

"Wasn't the ultimate fidelity who you told your stories to?"

"[ someone] is tired of doing too much work in her marriage at the exact moment someone returns to her life promising to do all the work instead."

"People screw up, you know. You shouldn't hold it against them. You shouldn't expect everyone to know everything you're thinking about and not getting from them. It doesn't mean they don't love you. They screw up."

"He confused how she saw him with how she needs him to see her."

"You don't give up on family. Not without trying to put it back together."

The Predictions by Bianca Zander

The Predictions by Bianca Zander
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The book definitely told a new story, disturbing as it was. In some ways, I found it intriguing to be on the inside of a commune that held the ideals of what a commune was supposed to be. In other ways, it was far too weird. Not weird like Charles Manson or child sex abuse. Weird as in completely unconventional and untethered love. I didn't hate it but I found the commune far too tolerant of the character, Shatki. Messing with all of the members with no consequence or limitations. Weird.

Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

Made You Up by Francesca Zappia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Is it just another angsty high school drama? In some ways it is. The angsty high school drama is more peripheral and dragged down the story but it was necessary for Alex to get to where she needed to go by the end of the book. Alex is a new kind of protagonist. Neuroses has finally gotten attention and some acceptance in modern society as we have acknowledged eating disorders, OCD, and other anxiety disorders that meet the DSM criteria. Alex is in the psychotic column. She has schizophrenia.

As frightening as the diagnosis is, the author easily writes Alex into a regular teenage life. The book begins at the age of diagnosis and an incident in a grocery store with lobsters and a new friend. Two colors stand out in this chapter and throughout. The friend had dark blue eyes. Alex has red (not orange or auburn) hair. This is significant because ten years pass and Alex is starting a new high school for her senior year. She's been in treatment for her schizophrenia and paranoia, she has coping skills and mechanisms and has high hopes for this new experience. On the first day of school, she meets the very frightening boy that happens to have the same dark blue eyes of her hallucination from childhood. Was he a hallucination or was he real?

So Alex has a somewhat debilitating mental illness that has been managed via meds and therapy. She wants friends. She wants a normal life. She wants to keep her mental illness a secret. I enjoyed the interactions she had with Miles - the love/hate relationship, the quick comebacks, discovering his secrets, and the normalcy they have. As the story progresses, there are some interesting patterns that emerge. There are shades of "A Beautiful Mind" and, don't freak out but, "Sixth Sense" that were very well played. What is real and what is a hallucination? In a high school setting, you can see how this question would be problematic. It's weird, anyway.

The book builds up and I quite enjoyed the revelations of what was real and what was not. To a point. Weird as high school is, it went a little over the top and that part wasn't a hallucination. The ending was a good wrapping up of loose ends and satisfying.

Wilf the Mighty Worrier Saves the World by Georgia Pritchett

From the writer behind the award-winning HBO show “Veep,” a 

 new children’s chapter book about an unlikely hero.

Wilf the Mighty Worrier

Saves the World

by Georgia Pritchett

November 3^rd, 2015

Wilf, who worries about everything, must face his fears to save the world!

Wilf is a little boy who worries quite a lot, about quite a lot of things. About almost everything, if we're being completely honest. He's frightened of stuffed animals. Peanut butter makes him nervous. And as for the awful crawly insects that have waggly feeler-thingies instead of eyes? Well, that is just something that doesn't bear thinking about. 

When the Most Evil Man in the World moves in right next door, Wilf is understandably quite alarmed. Panicked, in fact--totally and utterly freaked out. The neighbor, Alan, is a self-styled Evil Lunatic, with a grumpy robot sidekick and a dog named Kevin Phillips to prove it. Seriously, what kind of maniac gives his dog a surname? And why do the three of them always look like they're up to no good?

The only ally Wilf has in his desperate struggle to put a stop to Alan's ridiculous--but also quite upsetting, really, when you come to think of it--plans to destroy the world is his little sister, Dot, and her trusty "blanky," of course.

Could this be the end of the mighty worrier Wilf--or is it the beginning of a legend?

"A total delight of, what I call, a book!"

—Miranda Hart

"A lively, funny story."

—Jacqueline Wilson, Author of Candyfloss

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: GEORGIA PRITCHETT is a comedy writer who has written for a number of TV comedies and comedians including The Thick Of It, Veep, Miranda, Have I Got News For You, Smack the Pony, Graham Norton, Jo Brand, Paul Merton, Lenny Henry, Ronnie Corbett, Wallace and Gromit and several other real, fictional and occasionally plasticine people. Wilf the Mighty Worrier is Georgia's first work for children. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

Madilyn Paige CD

Madilyn Paige CD (as seen on TV)


This stunning self-titled debut EP features a set of tunes notable for their raw emotion and beautiful soundscapes. Madilyn wrote or co-wrote every song on the album, drawin from her own struggles as a teenager and her heartfelt expressions of the joy she finds in life. The first track, "Irreplaceable," begins with aching introspection and soars to an assurance of self-worth; the folloring track, "Foolish Game," was written right after Madilyn left the TV show The Voice and gives insight into the inevitability of discouragement in life and the realization that you can rise above the games that people play. An epic movie score string section combines with powerful rhythms on "Undercover," a breathtaking song about overcoming sadness and seeking the light all around you. The final track, "Little Things," playfully reminds us that the little things in life are the source of true joy. 


Just in case you are not keeping up with NBC's The Voice, she chose Usher to be her coach (there's a spoiler!). Oh, she is a flawless performer that hits those high notes like they are as easy as middle C. Her songs are uplifting, beautiful, and relevant to youth today. Her melodious voice has an amazing range and her overall performances are humble with a huge stage presence due to raw talent.

The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes

The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This may be my favorite YA book this year. In fact, in a long time. It's a simple read about a Christian youth camp that Hallelujah didn't want to go to because the preacher's boy told some lies and ruined her reputation. But she goes and meets Rachel, the new girl, and ends up on a trail with Rachel and a former friend, Jonah. They get lost. It's a bad lost. For days. The author details the lostness and the hunger, the lack of shelter and warmth. It's quite well written.

Within this story of being lost, getting injured, trying to be found, another story is taking shape. The lost and found is both physical and metaphorical. Hallie was a victim of bullying which led to mobbing. During the time she is lost and experiencing the things she experiences, she finds a different perspective. Having gone through an experience of this sort, I found a lot of deep meaning and truths in this process. Hallie's story is one of any of us who has felt helpless in a situation and eventually identified with the role of helpless victim. She examines her part of the problem and how she has contributed. Even though it is mostly a Christian fiction, the author examines the process and the solution much more deeply than simply turn the other cheek and forgive. She examines the damaged relationships from gossip, rumor, and how those relationships may be changed forever, particularly if the victim plays the victim role.

The book was empowering to me as I reviewed my own situation and found the silver linings, examined my silence where I needed to fight, yell, and make a scene but feared the mindset was already set. Maybe it was but what if it wasn't?

There were metaphors in the scenes with Jonah and the fish, the injured bird, and so many others. What could have been a simplistic "love your neighbor" story, took it deeper by examining the wounds, looking at the irritants that kept it infected, resolving to do differently, and loving yourself.

Clean read. I'll pass it onto my children.

My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh

My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of the best written books I have read as the author is an amazing writer, segueing one scene into another with easy transitions. He remembers well the details of adolescent thinking patterns before the prefrontal lobes are developed and decisions are made based on a reaction.

With incredible clarity, the protagonist recalls the details of his childhood, explaining to the audience how and why things were the way they were due to the years in history. How phone calls were so important yet lacked real privacy. There was no internet so teenagers talked on the phone for hours if they could which was difficult. Others wanted their turn and call waiting had begun its ascent. Additionally, many phones were still tethered to the wall by cords of varying lengths.

The rape of Lindy Simpson begins the recollection and that and the protagonist's obsession of Lindy is the central theme of his adolescence. It is the years of his coming of age and the way Lindy and her rape impact him so deeply. His thoughts are deep and age appropriate and the reader watches the slight shifts and maturing of his thought processes as he becomes slightly less egocentric (he is just a teenage boy, remember) and finally to the present day when he realizes his part in Lindy's pain is his to carry unless it would lessen Lindy's.

The reading is, at times, somewhat laborious as the POV meanders through and explores side memories which often do play a part of the main mystery or aspects of those pivotal summers. I almost felt like I had to relive my own long and confusing adolescence via reading about his. Except that, with his obsession of loving Lindy, his own family tragedies, my own adolescence was much less complicated. Admittedly, the adolescence of those recalled in this book is what parents dread and fear. It is not a feel good read. It would most likely resemble a diary kept to cleanse a conscience. It is not a book I would suggest to a book club.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've loved all of Kristin Hannah's books. The ones I've read have been contemporary fiction. This is the first historical fiction I've read by her. To be honest, I found it difficult to connect for the first bit of the book. The book begins the 1990's as an unidentified elderly woman is preparing to move into assisted living. She climbs the stairs of her home and opens an old trunk before her son finds her. At this point, the flashback begins.

The next part has two protagonists, Vianne, the older sister, and Isabelle, impetuous, impulsive, and fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants sister. Vianne is married in a country house in France. Isabelle is ten years younger at 18 and has just been expelled from another finishing school. The year is 1939. Hitler has declared war and begun the German march across Europe. This part of the story covers the whole of France under seige until 1945. The first portion is building the story and the setting, developing the characters and establishing personalities.

Cut back to the more recent day of the unidentified woman moving into her assisted living home and settling in. She receives and invitation to Paris to be a recipient or represent a recipient of one who was a resister during WWII. It upsets her to return to the past. And then we return to the story of the past.

The reader is never completely certain which sister is the old woman until the very end. The story brings another perspective of the citizens of France during Occupation. One joined the active resistance. The other lived in her home while German soldiers requisitioned it, allowing her to stay. It's not a difficult stretch to know which sister is which at this point. Both sisters, although separated most of the war, experience harrowing and horrific lives. Both rise to the occasion in their own way.

Hannah keeps true to her talents which is connecting the reader to her characters so completely that I forgot that there was other other conflict of the old woman deciding whether or not to go to the reunion. By the end, I almost didn't care which sister was the old woman, if,indeed, it was one of the sisters. But I did. In the end, I really did care. I was moved greatly by the sacrifices both women and the peripheral characters made. I loved them as if they were my own relatives.

Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Solitaire by Alice Oseman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really liked the message of this book and I connected with Michael Holden. Tori was too whiney to like and self absorbed, although that was kind of the point, each of the supporting characters had an element of interest to add to the story. I would have preferred better closure by the end of the book. The message is communicated well in theory but Tori is still kind of just there for me. I neither liked her nor didn't like her. Sorry about that double negative.

I enjoyed the references to literature without feeling lost in it. I actually quite enjoyed the different perspective on the essay about Pride and Prejudice. Well done.

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars

I love the novel that introduces unique characters then surrounds those with the people I know in caricature. Such is this book. Additionally, many of the scenes are written in such a way that I couldn't help but completely immerse myself in the scene. I loved the way the book was paced, the characters progressed, and the way they lived and died.

The book begins with Bonaventure's birth. Although mostly expected in nature, there is an odd foretelling that his birth is surrounded by loss. The author quickly establishes that the baby is also exceptional as he never makes a vocal sound. Bonaventure happens to have the extraordinary gift listening and hearing sounds like colors, heartbeats, and the coming of his dreaded grandmother Adalaide 10 minutes before she arrives.

Going further in the past, the reader is treated to his parents meeting, their courtship, and his beginning. The tragedy that occurs is not only the rending of time but also the beginning of Bonaventure's giftedness. It is also the beginning of pain but also the beginning of healing, forgiveness, and stitching together past and present. The novel has flavors of good Christianity, Hoo Doo of New Orleans, as well as self righteousness and vindictiveness. Spoiler here is that good Christianity and positive root work win out and not without humor or karma.

This is a unique book with unique characters, sparse prose, humor, and feel goods.