The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood

The year is 1960, and JFK has just been elected. With the election of such a young president, the entire country has the hope that with John and Jackie Kennedy in the White House, there will be change. Nobody hopes for this more than, Claire, a suburban house wife and mother of one daughter, with another baby on the way. Claire has everything she could want; a house in the suburbs, a loving husband, a family, and a group of friends. Despite having everything she could want, Claire is unhappy. She doesn't love her husband and feels stifled by her life. When Claire and her husband go away for his mother's birthday, Claire's life changes.

It's 1919 in San Francisco, where Vivien is looking for her long lost love who seems to have vanished during the terrible San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Refusing to believe that her lover, David, was killed in the earthquake, Vivien spends time looking for David. Vivien, who is an obituary writer, helps people deal with grief, yet can't come to terms with her own grief or the thought that David is dead. When death hits Vivien close to home, she realizes life is too short to spend life wondering what if.

Ann Hood does a wonderful job weaving together the two stories of Claire and Vivien in The Obituary Writer. For both women, who grieve different things, it's easy to see how their stories just might inspire one another. The Obituary Writer is a beautiful glimpse of two really interesting historical time periods. Hood's writing style makes this a quick, fun read while making you empathize with both Claire and Vivien.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

This book is an unusual work of fiction. The main character is a group of young Japanese women traveling to join their husbands in California. These husbands are men they have seen only in twenty-year old photographs and know only through letters filled with lies, written by professional letter writers. They arrive in the United States around 1920, a time when Japanese immigrants were not welcome. The women speak as a chorus, illustrating the universality of their experience. Individuals are identified simply as “one of us,”  “a few of us,” and “others of us.”  The group is made up of many different types of women. There are women from wealthy backgrounds and women from poverty, women from the city and women from the farm. There are talented women and women with ordinary skills, faithful wives and adulteresses.  There are women who are satisfied with their lot in life and women who are never happy. The story takes us through twenty-three years of their lives (their journey, husbands, hard work, children and relationships with whites), until the pivotal year of 1942. Then, after they have been labeled “Traitors,” the author finally identifies each woman by name as they prepare to depart for the government internment camps where they will live for the duration of the war.  The Buddha in the Attic, a prequel to Julie Otsuka’s earlier book, When the Emperor Was Divine, which is about life in those camps, is a lyrically written ode to human perseverance.