THE SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST

The Successful Novelist, David Morrell, Sourcebooks Inc, 2008, 281 pp

The subtitle of this book is "A Lifetime of Lessons About Writing and Publishing." David Morrell is the author of First Blood, (1972), the novel from which "Rambo" was made. I have never read any of his novels though he's written 19 of them, the most recent of which was published in 2007. In any case, he knows what he is talking about.

I read the book over several months. I am usually reading something about writing as a means of keeping me inspired and reminding myself that it is something one actually has to sit down and do. Morrell touches all the bases and his writing is fine. It moves along, is conversational and even covers a few facts I had not known before. For example, an author should buy up as many copies of any novel he wrote which is remaindered and sell them himself at readings and through his website.

The sections I liked best were at the beginning when he told his life story, how he became a novelist and then how he became successful. There is also a great chapter on how to focus your story. I will be suing this book in my continuing efforts to write some decent fiction.

A MERCY

A Mercy, Toni Morrison, Alfred A Knopf, 2008, 167 pp


My most anticipated book of 2008 was as great as I hoped it would be. Toni Morrison is in my personal list of top three favorite authors, a list which also includes Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver. I have read all of their novels and someday I am going to read them all again. Each of these authors showed me what great fiction by women is.

There have been so many reviews of A Mercy that I feel no need to cover anything already written about the book, so I'll just say what I found. Of course, the characters and their voices; each main character gets a voice and you see the tale from those different points of view.

One reviewer complained that Morrison is too woman centered and never has a sympathetic male character. I disagree. There are two men in A Mercy who are clearly men with a man's outlook and who are men of the 17th century, but they do not hate women or children and in fact care for and understand women and children in their way.

That said, it is a story of women (White, Native American and Black) and their varying degrees of servitude versus freedom. In fact it is a story of self-discovery and quests for freedom by each of four women; a story of their various relationships with each other. Morrison delves into trust, loyalty, caring and teaching between women. Basically her themes are all there.

I hope this will not be her last novel but she is in her 70s and I may have to accept that she is done with novels. If so, I'll say in tribute that all women of whatever color or station in life could benefit from this and all of her books because Morrison's truth is that slavery, servitude, oppression, belittling, while they are the ugly sins of humans against each other, only exist and are perpetuated because some of us agree to be enslaved, forced to serve, oppressed and belittled.

ONE FOR THE MONEY

One for the Money, Janet Evanovich, Scribner, 1994, 320 pp

I was born in Pittsburgh, PA but I was raised in New Jersey. Granted, it was Princeton, NJ, a college town filled with snooty rich people and condescending intellectuals of various religious and political persuasions. In junior high, I (the most nonathletic of girls) signed up for the field hockey team. It was pure torture for me and I can't imagine what I was thinking, but amongst our opponents, I met a whole new type of girl: tough talking jocks who also wore teased hair and lots of make-up (off the hockey field), chewed gum ferociously, swore and did things with boys. I can't say that I ever joined them but I was fascinated. My mother was horrified.

Stephanie Plum I could never be but I'm afraid that I have found a new heroine to love. Luckily I get to be the vicarious tough girl at least 14 more times. I am already a Sara Paretsky fan, but her PI is a more socially conscious woman. Stephanie is pure Jersey girl and at least so far, she is in it for the money. In One For the Money, she becomes a bounty hunter for her cousin's bail bond business. That means chasing down anything from drunks to drug dealers to highly dangerous criminal psychopaths who "failed to appear" in court; they are called FTAs.

Then there is Joseph Morelli, a cop on the lam because he is falsely accused of murder one, but also is Stephanie's childhood associate who introduced her to sex and took her virginity. He is the one she is after in this novel and I have a feeling from reading previews of the later books, that he is going to stick around.

Great fun, fast reading, scary moments, all the elements for a totally escapist read and way more entertaining than any chick lit. Thanks to my blogging friend Piksea, another intrepid Jersey girl (check out her blog at http://fautisbookquest.blog-city.com), who finally convinced me to read Janet Evanovich.

TIME TO RESUME

Dear Readers,

Finally I am back home. Sadly, after three months of hospital, rehab and time at home, my mom passed away on Easter Sunday morning. She made a mighty effort to recover from her strokes and all else that happened to her through the wonders of modern medicine, but at last I think she realized that life would never be the same for her and in fact would be so reduced in quality that it was time to move on.

Some say that I was lucky to be able to be with her everyday for the last three months of her life, and indeed I was. But it made losing her that much more intense. We had our difficulties over the years, my mom and I. I was never probably the daughter she thought I would be. Still, in our later years, we found a way to be at peace with each other and treasure in each other what we could. I got so much from her. If anyone reading this has ever had trouble with your mother, I can say that she is in you, deep within you, and only time will show you in what ways. The good and the bad. Luckily for me, with my mom, it was mostly good.

Now I am back to my blog. We will see if I still have any readers. I hope so and I hope to hear from you. I have lots of books to post about and the first one is about a girl whom my mom could not stand. Ha! Life is so weird.

VERONICA

Veronica, Mary Gaitskill, Pantheon Books, 2005, 257 pp


This book gave me symptoms of the flu. I don't mean that as a criticism. The two main characters, Veronica and Allie, are sick. Veronica has AIDS, Allie has Hepatitis C. Told in first person through Allie's eyes, the story of their strange friendship is fraught with the dark side of late 20th century attempts to connect with other human beings.

With unrelenting intensity, Allie relives running away from home as a teenager, hanging out with other disconnected people, doing drugs and engaging in promiscuous sex. She falls into modeling, which is no world for a young woman with identity and self-esteem issues. Finally when she is thoroughly used and broken, she meets Veronica at a temp job in New York City and their unlikely relationship is formed.

The writing is literary in the extreme but finely crafted and evocative in its spareness. Gaitskill takes you deep into the dark night of human loneliness and despair, similar to many of Joyce Carol Oates' novels but without all the rushing gush of words. The physical illnesses are a metaphor for the spiritual malaise, as I believe they are in real life.

I would not recommend this book to anyone who is the least bit emotionally unstable. It is frightening and the sudden bright ray of realization and redemption at the end does nothing to mitigate the murky degradation Gaitskill has put you through for over 200 pages. We all have our moments of depression but Allie's is unending. It made me super grateful for the closeness and love I enjoy with many people in my life but so sad for all the lonely people.

THE BIRD'S CHRISTMAS

The Bird's Christmas Carol, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Houghton Miflin Company, 1886, 69 pp


I read this book every year for many years as a child. It never failed to enchant me or make me cry. On this re-reading, after so many years, I began reading in my currently somewhat cynical frame of mind. How could any children be this good? How typical of the rich versus the poor can you get?

The Bird family, Mr and Mrs Bird, three sons, Grandma and Uncle Jack, are thrilled by the new baby, born on Christmas day and named Carol by Mrs Bird as the Christmas anthems peal out from the nearby Church of Our Savior. Carol is loved by all as she grows, but she is not well and becomes weaker every year. Yet she is also filled with love and busies herself with projects for those less fortunate, such as her "Circulating Library" for a local children's hospital.

Carol is fascinated by the large yet poor family living in a coachhouse behind the Birds' home. She wonders, "why do the big families always live in the small houses and the small families in the big houses?" She resolves to give them a wondrous Christmas and even earns some money from a story she wrote, as well as asking her family to buy presents for the Ruggles children instead of for her. The party is a huge success, Carol is fulfilled and dies peacefully in her bed that night. She is only 10 years old.

As nearly as I can determine, I loved this story as a child because, due to my Christian upbringing, I knew I was supposed to be like Jesus, but being strong willed and rebellious, I failed at this daily. Carol on the other hand excelled. In my secret heart, I longed to be as good and loving as Carol.

But the real feat accomplished by Kate Douglas Wiggin is a story that positively glows with the wonder of Christmas as it feels to small children. I felt it again as I finished the story. And I even shed a few tears again all these many years later.

LONESOME RANGERS

Lonesome Rangers, John Leonard, The New Press, 2002, 318 pp


John Leonard died of lung cancer on November 5, 2008. Until I read the obituary, I had never heard of him, yet he was first a reviewer for and then editor of "The New York Times Book Review" in the late 1960s and the 1970s. He has been called one of the two or three best literary critics in America and his writing described as criticism as performance art. Lonesome Rangers is a collection of his reviews and essays from 1997 to 2001.

I am glad to have made his acquaintance though sorry that he is gone. He claims to have read and reviewed over 13,000 books! That is over 200 books a year and in truth he seems to have read everything plus know all about TV, movies and pop culture. He says he became a reviewer when he realized that most of the books he was reading were better than the ones he was writing. I can so relate.

But his writing is stunning, witty, acerbic and irreverent. Basically he just rants. I now love him and not the least because he loved Toni Morrison, Barbara Kingsolver, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Arthur Koestler. He doesn't seem to care much for Tom Wolfe which is humorous to me because their styles are similar.

I am inspired and heartened that book reviews and literary criticism can be written with such panache, with such entertainment value. John Leonard must have never gotten good marks on book reports. Perhaps he never wrote any. He was a free spirit and ought to be required reading for all book reviewers.

WHY I HAVE NOT BEEN POSTING

On January 3, three days after her 90th birthday, my mother had a stroke and landed in the hospital. She suffered some damage to her body and mind but was recovering nicely when on January 11, she had a second stroke and almost did not make it. Thanks to modern medicine she survived and is now in a rehab facility.

On January 12, I flew to Ann Arbor, MI, not knowing if she would still be living when I got here. I am still here, spending many hours a day with her and living at my sister's house. It has been an intense experience and probably changed me in ways I have not realized yet. Finally this week, I can look at the future again though I am still not sure what it holds. My mom is an amazingly strong and practical woman and her total intention is to get well and go home. It is humbling to watch her deal with all that has happened.

I am grateful for modern medicine and the things that doctors and medications can do. But I have to say that even though she was in one of the best hospitals in the United States, if I and my sisters had not been on hand and vigilant, I don't know how she would have survived the experience. I am amazed that individuals without family close at hand make it out of hospitals. We have gotten very good at finding the doctors, nurses and aides who actually care and are professional at what they do. We are nosy, invasive and relentless when it comes to getting information about every aspect of her care and because of that she is doing well. It has been eye-opening in the extreme.

Along with everything else in my life, my reading has suffered. At first I could not even concentrate on more than a page and then there just wasn't time. That is going better now also and right now I am reading a most enjoyable book called What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. It is about artists, friendship and between the lines, so much more.

I will return to posting reviews tomorrow and thank you for your patience.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY

 
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon, Random House Inc, 2000, 636 pp

Because I read for so many different reasons and projects (research for my memoir, research for my novel, reading for the bookstore and the 5 reading groups I attend), I sometimes read many books before I find one to love unconditionally. I've always planned to read Chabon and grabbed this one on a whim one day at the library. He won the Pulitzer for this one, so by a stretch, it fits into My Big Fat Reading Project, but it is about cartoonists from the 1940s and I've never been into cartoons. (I found out why in the book.) Anyway, it was great, absorbing, heart wrenching and I did not want it to end.

The writing is beautiful, muscular, full of words and images that put me deeply into both places and people's hearts. The stories of Kavalier, refugee from Prague, student of magic and artist extraordinaire, who can escape from anywhere and anything except his survivor's guilt; and of his cousin Sammy Clay, who can spin stories 24 hours a day, who loves men and women and children but not himself and takes the concept of loyalty to a new dimension; these stories go on and on. Every story is larger than life, like the superheroes they created, composed of feats of overcoming adversity, massive creativity, heights of triumph and sloughs of despair, all tied together by dogged perseverance and hard work.

Meanwhile, the reader learns about the rise and fall of the Golden Age of superhero comics, Brooklyn and Jews from just before World War II into the 1950s. Since this is the period I've been reading through for the past six years, it was another view for me, one I had only glimpsed in a few books so far.

This amazing author has moved right up to the top of the queue of authors whose entire oeuvre of novels I must read and I am off to the library to get The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I was never into baseball either but I am sure it won't bother me.

MY NAME IS WILL

My Name is Will, Jess Winfield, Hachette Book Group, 2008, 288 pp


The subtitle of this mildly entertaining story is "A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare." There is plenty of sex, drugs are in abundance and there are two Shakespeares. A young William Shakespeare is coming of age, learning about persecution (his family is Catholic) and wenching, while he writes his first poetry and hangs out with wannabe actors and playwrights.

Simultaneously runs the story of Will Shakespeare Greenburg, slacker grad student at UC Santa Cruz, who gets himself involved with too many women, certain drug deals which play out at a Renasissance Faire near Berkeley, CA and tries to write a masters thesis on his namesake.

The author attempts a comparison of the religious troubles in 16th century England with the War on Drugs in 1980s USA. He comes up with many zany characters who are the highlight of the book. The female characters are all strong and wise to the ways of men and the world.

Winfield spent his early adult years with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, who abridge Shakespeare and other writers, turning them into comedy. (There is an example of this in the book.) He went on to write and produce cartoons for Disney. This career path is evident in My Name is Will and if nothing else, he makes the infamous bard accessible.

THE HUNGER GAMES

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008, 407 pp


I have mentioned before how the bookstore where I work is located in a community just outside of Los Angeles where family values, reading, education and being involved in one's childrens' upbringing are important issues. In a word: conservative. As Young Adult literature gets edgier by the month, I am called upon as a bookseller to pronounce on "appropriate reading" when parents inquire.

It is a tricky proposition and almost always bothers me, since I consider myself an optimistic anarchist and from that philosophical position, feel that people (including kids) should read what they want to read.

So, The Hunger Games has violence. It has children killing children. It has abuse of children by an evil, repressive government. But it also has a heroine who epitomizes intelligence, bravery, loyalty and survival for all, not just herself. If I had a teenage daughter at this time in history, I would want her to read The Hunger Games.

Katniss Everdeen is 16 years old and lives each day to provide food and safety for her mother and young sister. They live in a poor outer district of a country made up of the ruins of what used to be North America. Part of the harsh control exercised by the government is an annual televised event, the "Hunger Games", in which each district must send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen, who will fight to the death of all but one survivor. When Katniss' sister gets picked by lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

The rest of the story plays out in a combination of reality TV, Roman gladiator games and the Greek myth of Theseus, the Labyrinth and the Minotaur. It is a breathlessly exciting page turner and in my opinion beats Twilight hands down.

BOOKS

Books, Larry McMurtry, Simon & Schuster, 2008, 259 pp


It turns out that I'd only read three of McMurtry's books before reading Books, which is odd because I feel like I know this author very well. Of course I've seen the movie versions of The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment. I read Evening Star (1992) and disliked it intensely all the way through but suddenly, inexplicably liked it at the very end. I read Lonesome Dove (1985) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and loved every paragraph. On the strength of that book alone, I fell in love with McMurtry.

I always planned to read more of his fiction but so far have not. I read his memoir of driving the interstates (Roads, 2000) and that was great for me because I was doing a lot of travel on the interstates myself at the time.

I like McMurtry because he clearly likes people, both men and women, and he revels in quirkiness; he doesn't judge; he doesn't expect everyone to be just like everyone else. He may be the Mark Twain of the 20th century.

Books is a memoir of his life as a book dealer. I have long wanted to visit his vast bookstore in Archer, TX. In Books we learn the story of how that store came to be. McMurtry is now 72 years old and he writes Books like an old man telling stories. It is sketchy, full of people no one outside the world of rare books and book collecting would know. The book men are some the quirkiest people ever. It is almost as if McMurtry is reminiscing for his own pleasure more than anything else.

But I liked it. It put me into that world. It is a niche, like Americana music or comic book collecting. Near the end he talks a bit about the fate of publishing, books, bookstores and book readers. He becomes a bit sentimental ( I mean, he IS Larry McMurtry), but he is no fool. Kind of like his characters.

TOP 20 FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2008

Happy New Year 2009!

This past year I read 127 books, up from 124 the year before. Once again I had a bit of trouble narrowing down the list of favorites to only 20.

Because of my job at the Oldest Children's Bookstore in America (named as such by Publisher's Weekly), I branched out to reading books for readers aged 8-12 as well as Young Adult, so I could be helpful to all the grandmothers, moms, dads, aunts and uncles who come in needing recommendations. We also sell books for adults and so I read to keep up on some current releases.

Also in 2008, I read books for My Big Fat Reading Project and covered 1954 through 1955.

All the books I read have been or will be soon reviewed here on the blog. As usual, I am highly interested in knowing what books you enjoyed in your year of reading, especially because I may have missed some good books. You can comment below this post. The easiest way is to choose "anonymous" from the list of ways to post your comments because then you don't have to fill in any other information.

Here is the list:

All About Lulu, Jonathan Evison
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott
The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle
Highwire Moon, Susan Straight
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
The Importance of Music to Girls, Lavinia Greenlaw
Loving Frank, Nancy Horan
The Master Butcher's Singing Club, Louise Erdrich
A Mercy, Toni Morrison
Peony in Love, Lisa See
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson
Reservation Nation, David Fuller Cook
The Senator's Wife, Sue Miller
The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggins
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
Three Little Words, Ashley Courter-Rhodes
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell

SCRAMBLED EGGS AT MIDNIGHT

Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, Brad Barkley & Heather Hepler, Speak, 2006, 262 pp


This summer while in Michigan for the family reunion, I paid a visit to my second favorite indie bookstore in Ann Arbor: Nicola's Books. I had with me the mother and twin stepsisters of my daughter-in-law. Ah, the 21st century family. One of the twins recommended Scrambled Eggs at Midnight so I bought it.

The story is utterly charming, taking the 21st century family theme to the entire end of ridiculous and the two-author method to new heights. In alternating chapters, the male author writes from the teenage boy's point of view, the female author from the girl's.

The girl's mom is an aging hippie divorced artist/craft person who works at Renaissance Faires, so they are constantly on the move. The boy's dad, assisted by the mom, runs a Christian fat camp for teens. The boy and the girl are both lonely, don't "get" their parents and naturally hook up.

So it is a summer teen romance with plenty of teen angst and a happy ending. As I said, utterly charming. So why didn't I finish reading it until November? Well, sometimes when you are a middle-aged woman with a mother turning 90, a husband out of work, two grown sons and three growing grandchildren, a Presidential campaign in the background noise and a tanking economy, who is writing a memoir and is up to when she started first grade, a charming teen romance doesn't always resonate.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS

Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo, Alfred A Knopf, 2007, 642 pp


I read Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls about five years ago. I liked it well enough because the characters were good, because he kept me turning the pages and because at the time I was going through big, positive spiritual changes and there is nothing like a book about small-town America to link you back to the mundane.

I read Bridge of Sighs, rushing through it rather more quickly than I probably should have, because I had a reading group discussion coming up. The rushing made me resent the many slow passages which I might have enjoyed more at a more leisurely pace. I did like the characters and their development. I admired the ideas he was expounding: do people really ever change their basic character?; is it better to be sunny and hopeful or warily cynical?; what is the ultimate effect of carcinogenic toxins on a gene pool? And the ultimate mystery of life: what is love?

The bottom line though is that I did not really like the book. Certain things annoyed me just a little too much and spoiled the overall effect. They were the above mentioned slow passages, an odd arrangement of the plot, some dialogue that didn't fit the characters and a just slightly somehow insincere quality in some of the emotions.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

Empire of the Sun, J G Ballard, Simon & Schuster, 1984, 279 pp

Perhaps I was just not ready for another POW camp story. After all, it was only two months ago that I suffered through Andersonville (MacKinlay Kantor, 1955). I did not enjoy one page of Empire of the Sun, although there were some good sentences. You may ask why I read it, a legitimate question. The answer is, it was for a reading group and it is part of my personal ethics always to attend the meetings and read the books for my reading groups if at all possible.

This book is an autobiographical novel about the years the author spent as a prisoner of the Japanese in Shanghai during WWII. He was only 11 years old when he was catapulted from his secure and privileged life in the International Settlement, separated from his parents and left to fend for himself as a prisoner of war. Yes, he was a wily survivor and lived to tell the tale. He is not even especially bitter about it; I suppose because as a child, one is better at taking life as it comes. I couldn't help thinking about what if that had happened to my sons at that age.

I have coined another name for a genre: prison camp lit. I remembered two others I have read: King Rat by James Clavel and Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler. I am sure I will come across others in my reading adventures. Maybe next time I will eat extra protein and green leafy vegetables while taking vitamin C.

THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA

The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan, The Penguin Press, 2006, 411 pp


Here's what I like about Michael Pollan. He has a clear moral stance from which he writes. Because of that he is not merely a spectator but digs right in and does what he writes about. I mean, who else would actually buy a young steer and follow his life all the way to slaughter, standing literally in the shit of an industrial feedlot with his steer?

Ever since my hippie days, I've been involved with food. I was eating a macrobiotic diet throughout my first pregnancy and the breastfeeding of my son, who also was reared on the same dietary principles. My first husband and I founded Eden Foods in Ann Arbor, MI. One of my sisters and her husband had an organic farm in Pennsylvania during the early 70s. My other sister's husband was an original partner in Eden Foods and works in the natural food business to this day. Though I am no longer a vegetarian and in fact am a complete omnivore, I learned in the macrobiotic years that I could mostly be my own doctor and keep myself and my family reasonably healthy by being conscious about food.

The Omnivore's Dilemma was therefore highly interesting, especially for the knowledge of how industrial concepts, big money interests and globalization have made being conscious about food a very tricky proposition. But the true high point of this book was Section II, entitled "Pastoral: Grass", where Pollan captures the essence of ecology; what it really means to the health of all species and to the future of life on this planet. He shows us some incredible individuals who have figured out how to apply ecology to an agricultural model and who are compelled to live virtually "off the grid" to protect what they do from big industrial agriculture which goes hand in hand with big money and big government: the triumvirate that surely spells doom for planet Earth.

This is a long, detailed book. Reading it requires a dictionary AND Google, a willingness to learn new things and in the end perseverance just to get through it. But one more thing about Michael Pollan is the leaven here. He is serious about his subject but he does not take himself too seriously. Wry is what he is.

THE EIGHT

The Eight, Katherine Neville, Ballantine Books, 1989, 598 pp


This was a fairly entertaining story but it seemed to go on too long. A chess set originally belonging to Charlemagne is the center of a big chase and mystery, spanning hundreds of years across many countries and involving key world figures. There is supposedly some kind of power involved with the chess set and naturally most people want to rule the world.

Neville moves back and forth in history, includes interesting tidbits about the game of chess and covers various love stories. The 20th century part of the story is set in the 1970s during the "energy crisis" and the beginnings of OPEC. In the midst of the War on Terror, that all seems so quaint.

The Eight got a big push this fall because Neville released a sequel called The Fire just a few weeks ago. I won't be reading it.

THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell, Harcourt Inc, 2006, 245 pp


This chilling novel falls in the category of crimes against and by women. Esme Lennox was a young girl and woman who simply did not fit in with what was expected by her culture. When she reached young womanhood and her family needed her to make a good marriage to save their financial and social standing, she dramatized her final rebellion. For that she was committed to a mental institution by her father with her mother's consent. From that point on, no one in the family spoke of her. She had been vanished.

Sixty-one years later in late 20th century Edinburgh, mental institutions are being closed down. Inmates with no family are simply dumped back into society. But Esme has a great-niece, a young independent single woman who has never known that she had a great aunt. When Iris is contacted by the institution, she is faced with devastating decisions and must unravel the mystery of her family.

The novel is exceedingly well done. Set in the present with the back story coming out bit by bit, the horror of the story, the extreme twistedness of the characters and the inhumane attitudes toward a woman such as Esme drilled into my heart. Though I have known about such abuses for a long time, I felt shattered by this story. Who needs Stephen King when we have writers like Maggie O'Farrell? Apparently the horrors that mankind can dream up and then inflict on each other transcend any invented ones.

The real secret of the novel though is in the writing and in the delicate, tasteful way that all is finally revealed. You can suppress and twist the human spirit but you cannot eliminate it.

THE SENATOR'S WIFE

The Senator's Wife, Sue Miller, Alfred A Knopf, 2008, 306 pp


Since reading Sue Miller's first novel twelve years ago, when it was already a decade old (The Good Mother, 1986), I've carried the idea that she was a good writer, yet for some reason I never read any more of her novels. She has written nine of them. Well, she is a good writer, especially about women: what it is like to be female in the 20th and 21st centuries from the viewpoints of different kinds of women.

In The Senator's Wife, she contrasts two women of different generations and widely different backgrounds. Delia is the senator's wife. She is in her seventies and has spent her adult life raising children and figuring out how to deal with the infidelities of a husband who is a successful politician and whom she deeply loves.

Meri came from lower class people, had a neglectful cold-hearted mother but bettered herself through education and married a young professor when she was in her 30s. She has a career and an independent outlook though she also is very much in love with her absent minded husband.

When Meri and her husband move in next door to Delia, the women form a relationship and all their stories come out. Meri needs a mother as she goes through her first pregnancy and her reactions to caring for an infant. Delia needs a daughter who does not judge her as she deals with her aging husband's illness. Ultimately neither gets what she needs.

What I liked was that Miller makes no judgements about either woman. She does make you love them both while exposing their faults and making clear the pressures under which each made her life decisions. In that way, each woman gets what she needs from the author. This is definitely a woman's book but a good one because it is truthful.