The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman

Lolly Lindsey is the matriarch of her small family, living in a fictional small town Michigan city. Lolly's daughter Arden and granddaughter Lauren are busy leading their own busy lives in Chicago, when an emergency call about Lolly leaves Arden stunned. Arden and Lauren realize that it's time to reconnect with Lolly who is now seventy years old and suffering from early onset dementia.

Over the course of their Memorial Day weekend visit home, Lolly tells her life story through the charms on her charm bracelet. From the sewing machine charm given to her by her Irish immigrant to the loon given to her by her husband the night he proposed, Arden and Lauren learn about Lolly's life and in turn learn a few things about themselves. 

This sweet, thoughtful book tells the story of three generations of women. Wade Rouse using the pen name Viola Shipman, in honor of his grandmother, tells her story in this book . For anyone who has ever had a family story telling grandmother or other family member, The Charm Bracelet is sure to read like a family history.

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.

Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford

It is spring in 2006.  Evelyn Beegan is 26 and is treading the same waters that most recent college grads have to brave: the first real job.  Evelyn is the newly minted director of membership for People Like Us, a new social networking site.  Think Facebook for the society set complete with invite-only membership.  As a teen, Evelyn attended Sheffield Academy- an exclusive eastern boarding school.  Now, we find our main character returned to her alma mater for the annual Sheffield-Enfield lacrosse match in order to do a little networking.  The book begins with Evelyn’s obsession to sign up all of the “right” people for the website but before we know it, she is desperately attempting to sprint to the top of New York City’s social hierarchy. 

Several reviews have likened Clifford’s Everybody Rise to an Edith Wharton novel set in the 21^st century.  This is an apt description, but Evelyn’s evolution throughout the book seems a much more positive one than any of Wharton’s female characters.  Evelyn must learn how to be a self-sufficient adult in a world outside that which her parents have always wanted her to find.  And more than that, to find a purpose in life.

Everybody Rise is available August 18^th.  Check out a copy now.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

In Department of Speculation, author Jenny Offill employs an unusual style to tell the story of a marriage. In this book, the wife (all characters are unnamed) records thoughts and experiences about her life in New York City.  She ruminates about earlier suitors, how her husband wooed and won her, the birth of their child, the stress of living with bedbugs and, eventually, the strain of infidelity on a marriage, even a marriage with what seems to be an ideal partner. With small observations about Buddhism, stars, Antarctic exploration, space travel and other diverse subjects, Jenny Offill tells a modern day love story in lyrical, poetic language. 

Check out Dept. of Speculation at the library today!

Some Luck by Jame Smiley

Jane Smiley’s newest novel is the first in The Last Hundred Years trilogy.  The Pulitzer prize winning author intends to cover 100 years in the life of an Iowa farm family and the first novel, Some Luck, covers the years 1920-1953.  Smiley follows the Langdon family of Denby, Iowa through childbirth, death, the Great Depression and World War II in a unique fashion.  Not only does the author write from many of the different characters points of view, but each chapter itself represents one year. 

We begin with Walter, the 25 year-old father and owner of the farm.  His wife Rosanna is about to give birth to their first child, Frank, and he is ruminating on all of the things that farmers think about: which crops to plant this year, how many animals are there to take care of and can I really afford to farm all of this land? As the years move forward, Smiley introduces us to all of the Langdon children: Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire and their unique personalities.  We see Walter struggle with changing technologies (horses vs. tractors) and Rosanna has her own challenges with loss and religion. 

Each of the Langdon children is different than the last, and we hear a lot from the point of view of Frank, the handsomest and, arguably, the most cunning Langdon child.  When the US gets involved in World War II, he joins the army and becomes a sniper while his sensitive younger brother Joe stays home on a II-A deferment and takes care of the family farm.  Lillian falls in love with a handsome stranger and Henry devours books as fast as he can get his hands on them.  The reader is quickly absorbed into the world that Smiley creates and is soon laughing and crying along with the family. 

Some Luck has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and is a profound family saga.

Agostino by Alberto Moravia

Originally written in 1940’s Italy and rejected by Fascist censors, Agostino by Alberto Moravia has been retranslated and republished by the New York Review of Books. Despite being set in a different country and different time, it tells a timeless and universal story of isolation and loss of innocence. Thirteen year old Agostino is vacationing at a beach with his attractive and newly widowed mother. An only child, he has basked in his mother’s attentions all his life. So, when she seems to enjoy the attentions of a handsome young man on the beach, Agostino begins to feel jealous, confused and rejected.To avoid his mother, he hangs out with a gang of tough working class boys, boys with whom he has nothing in common. They steal and vandalize property. They communicate each other with insults and physical blows. They humiliate Agostino emotionally and physically. Nevertheless, driven by curiosity and a desire to leave behind his childhood(and his attachment to his mother), he seeks them out daily. He comes to realize that he no longer fits into either world.

Check out Agostino by Alberto Moravia @ the library!

The Wives of Los Alamos by Tarashea Nesbit

In The Wives of Los Alamos, Tarashea Nesbit tells the story of the creation of the atomic bomb through the experiences of a group who knew nothing about the work, the wives of the scientists recruited to develop a project they called the “Gadget.”

Families began arriving in Los Alamos in 1943 when it was a city still under construction. Although the wives were a diverse group, coming from various backgrounds and various parts of the country, they quickly became a group, a neighborhood and a sisterhood, united by isolation from friends and family, physical hardship, patriotism, and keeping secrets when they didn’t even know what secrets they were keeping. For this reason, the author’s choice of telling the story through the first person plural, the communal “we,” works very well. Most of the wives were young, newly married college graduates. Their names were changed and their letters home censored. They were assigned to live in hastily constructed apartments with army-issued home furnishings. The roads and yards were either mud or dust. Sometimes there was no water or power. They tried to lead ordinary lives: cooking, cleaning and raising children. They formed friendships and helped each other. They formed book clubs and held dances. They argued and gossiped. After August, 1945, when everyone in the world learned what their husbands had been working on in Los Alamos, they were free to return to normal life. Some stayed in Los Alamos, their husbands taking jobs with the National Laboratory. Some left, their husbands taking teaching positions or jobs in private industry. Some felt pride and some felt guilt about the bomb. They resumed their middle-class American lives, but for a few years they had been part of something that changed the history of the world.

Check out The Wives of Los Alamos @ the library!

Model Home by Eric Puchner

When Warren Ziller moved his family from Wisconsin to the West Coast, he hoped to exchange a comfortable Midwestern life for an even better one in California.  But his wife and children adapted to life in Southern California with varying degrees of success. Seventeen year old Dustin fits right in. He becomes that stereotype of a 1980’s California adolescent: a handsome surfer and garage-band musician. But his brother and sister, eleven year old Jonas and sixteen year old Lyle, don’t fit in quite so well. Warren’s wife, Camille, works for a small film company and tries to maintain a normal family life. But she worries that her husband is keeping a secret from her and that secret is an affair. Warren is keeping a secret from his entire family, but it is not an affair.  His secret is possibly even more destructive. He has risked and lost all the family’s wealth on a failed housing development in the desert. While the family struggles with their problems, big and small, an actual tragedy occurs: their gated-community house explodes and Dustin is badly injured and disfigured. Within a year they are the only family living in Warren’s failed development, forced there by poverty. Eventually they adjust to their new circumstances, but the family cannot hold together. Model Home by Eric Puchner shows a family broken by mistakes and bad luck.  It can happen to anyone.

Check out Model Home @ the library!

The Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney

Sisters Anna, Bett and Carrie used to be famous singing sisters called "The Alphabet Sisters". Now, estranged and called back for their grandmother's 80th birthday party in South Australia. Bett started a new life in London, England far from her ex-fiance, now married to her younger sister, Carrie. Anna is in Sydney, and is quick to get back home to remember better times. And Carrie is still there, wondering if she made the right choices.

Family drama starts to work its self out, as more drama starts to unfold. Each sister has her own worries, and each needs the other even though it's been three long years since they've seen each other. If you are looking for a beach read with a bit of weight, get lost in the world of Moncia McInerney's The Alphabet Sisters.

Check out The Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney @ the library!

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Georgie McCool is on the verge of something big. Her show, the show she has been working on with longtime friend and writing partner Seth has caught the eye of a network executive. He wants a scrips and to have a meeting on December 27th. It could work, if Neal and the girls just skip their Christmas trip to Nebraska, and she works through the holiday. It will be fine.

But it's not fine, as Neal and the girls leave for Omaha without her. Stuck without her family, but with her dream still intact, Georgie has time to work on her new show. Her mother thinks Neal has left her, and even Georgie isn't sure what his leaving means. If he would just answer the phone she could talk to him and figure it all out.

It's on landline at her mother's house that she finally gets a hold of Neal, but not current (December 2013) Neal, Neal from December 1998, right after a huge fight when he left her for Omaha the last time. Can Georgie balance her current dreams with her family? Or has she already lost Neal?

Landline is one of those comedic, dramatic, make sure you have some tissue on hand books that captures the way everyday life gets in the way of what we truly want. Georgie's current life flashes back to her college years when she was just meeting Neal, and becoming friends with Seth. The way Georgie struggles to balance work and family will resonate with many readers, looking for balance in their own life.

Landline will be published on July 8th, and this review was based on an Advance Readers Copy from the publisher. It's in the catalog, so you can put a hold on the book today!

All The Birds Singing by Evie Wyld

Jake Whyte is living on a remote island off the coast of England. An Australian, a woman who is farming sheep on her own, she is an outsider who spurns the company of the locals. She prefers to live and work alone until someone or something starts to kill and eviscerate her sheep. Frightened, she seeks out the help of the man who previously owned her farm. Are the sheep being killed by teens, foxes, or something even more threatening? He is unable to advise her or assuage her mounting fear. She remains on her own. Alternating chapters tell the story of how Jake came to live on this island so far from her home. In reverse chronological order we learn the story of Jake’s life: her days traveling with a sheep-shearing crew; her life with Otto, a sheep farmer; her time as a prostitute; and her life with her difficult family. These chapters drive the story, building a page-turning tension that compels the reader to guess and guess again why Jake is always on the run, why she keeps to herself, why her back is covered with scars and why she maintains a tenuous connection with her estranged family. In All The Birds Singing, Evie Wyld has created a novel of suspense and mystery, a page-turner that will keep the reader enthralled to the last page.

Check out All The Birds Singing @ the library!

Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

In a series of letters to Richard Gere, Bartholomew Neil tells us his story of what happened after the death of his mother. He was her primary caretaker during her life, and now his life feels a bit empty. He has few friends, most prominently Father McNamee the local priest. With his therapist he has made a few goals including having a beer with a friend at a bar, and more privately talking to the Girlbrarian who he watches work at the library.

While working towards his own new normal, things quickly spiral out of control when Father McNamee renounces his priesthood and moves in with Bartholomew. As his mother told him, one persons bad luck is another person's good luck, and he sees no reason not to let Father McNamee move in. In another therapy session Bartholomew meets Max, and Max just might be the key to Bartholomew meeting some of his goals.

Matthew Quick is a master of quirky characters dealing with dark issues. Bartholomew is an insightful, unintentionally hysterical and slightly unreliable narrator who looks at the world a bit differently than expected. Like his other adult novel, Silver Linings Playbook, The Good Luck of Right Now is going to be made into a movie, so pick up the book before it hits the big screen!

Check out The Good Luck of Right Now @ the library

The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Albom

How would you like to receive a phone call from one of your loved ones who passed away?  Well the townspeople of Coldwater are able to do just that.  Many of the members of this small town are getting frequent calls from their loved ones that have passed away.  This event leaks to the media and everyone wants to head to Coldwater to learn more about this miraculous happening.  One member of the town, Sully Harding becomes suspicious of these phone calls and decides to investigate what is happening.  Are these phone calls a hoax or are the townspeople really getting phone calls from their loved ones? Find out for yourself in this novel written by the author who also wrote, The Five People you Meet in Heaven.  This novel will leave you at the edge of your seat wanting to learn the truth.  As a reader you become attached to the characters while they are all trying to make sense of this phenomenon.

 

The audiobook version of this novel is read by Mitch Albom and who better to read the story than the author himself.  This moving story comes to life as the author takes you through this emotional story. With a surprise ending, this is a must read for anyone who believes in the afterlife or is curious about how the world could react if their loved ones are calling from the dead. 

Check out the The First Phone Call from Heaven @ the library! 

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Two brothers, born in Calcutta in the 1940’s, are close in age but miles apart in temperament. Subhash, the older, is responsible and obedient while his brother, Udayan, is brash and passionate. The apolitical Subhash leaves India to attend graduate school in Rhode Island but returns after Udayan is killed by police for his radical political activities. Because he is unhappy with the bleak future his brother’s pregnant young widow faces in India, he marries her and takes her back to Rhode Island. Here Gauri gives birth to a baby girl, Bela, whom Subhash regards as a daughter rather than a niece. But Gauri cannot invest herself in this family. Despite his kindness and self-sacrifice, she cannot accept Subhash as a substitute for the soul mate who had been her first husband. She is unhappy and distant toward both him and Bela, preferring academic studies to motherhood. Subhash cannot try enough for the both of them and eventually the family separates in such a brutal way they can never reconcile. Yet life moves along. Gauri finds a career in academia in California and Subhash continues his career in Rhode Island. Bela, without knowing the story of her biological father, becomes a rebel in her own way, rootless, traveling across the country to promote sustainable agriculture but always anchored to Subash, her devoted “father”. The Lowland is a story of immigration and assimilation. But Gauri, burdened with anger and self-absorption, would have been as unhappy as a traditional Indian wife as she was as a displaced American one.

Check out The Lowland @ the library!

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

Kelly Corrigan is a young woman in her early 20s.  She longs for adventure, for a chance to have interesting new experiences that you can only have when you “leave the house.”   She and her college roommate decide to go on a round-the-world trip beginning in Taipei.  The two are on the road for two months before they run out of cash while in Sydney, Australia.  Corrigan pictured herself working in a bar or restaurant to save up money for the next leg of her trip; not playing nanny to two kids whose mother has recently died of cancer.   And she certainly never expected to travel more than half way around the world to connect with her mother, of all people.  But this book is all about difference between what you imagine and what is.  About what you think is important, and what actually is important.

Corrigan uses a lot of flashbacks to talk about the type of person her mother is.  She makes it very plain that she and her mother have virtually nothing in common.  Her mother is a practical woman.  One who doesn’t spoil her children and makes them follow her rules at all times.  Her father, however, was always a pleasant, outgoing guy who loved to spend time with his kids after work and called his only daughter “Lovie.”  But as her mother liked to remind her daughter, “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.”  Corrigan relishes the opportunity to be living her own adventure away from her mother’s nagging but soon finds that her mother’s voice is the one constantly giving her advice on how to care for the Tanner children.  As the weeks tick by, Corrigan is struck by how the Tanner family learns to survive without a mother.  The harder she tries to help the children, the more she thinks about her own mother and slowly discovers that life’s true adventure is experiencing life within a family. 

Glitter and Glue is a quick read that is a different type of coming of age memoir.  It begins with a young woman’s quest for independence and excitement and ends with her deep feelings about the importance of family.  Glitter and Glue is available everywhereFebruary 4th, 2014.  

How to be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman

Marta is a middle-aged housewife living outside a village in a Scandinavian country. She is quite isolated, having no friends or relatives or even memories of her own. She is totally reliant on her husband Hector and his mother for companionship and support. Hector’s mother had given Marta her book “How to be a Good Wife” for a wedding gift, a book that dispenses old-fashioned advice about wifely and home-making obligations and Marta obediently lives her life according to its rules. When her adult son finishes school and moves to the city, Marta surreptitiously stops taking the pills Hector has insisted she take her entire married life. He has told her she is not well but provides no real details and she no longer believes him.  Without the pills, she begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of people, particularly a young woman, lurking in the closet, the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen. Clearly these visions are a result of her refusal to take her drugs, but is she experiencing psychotic episodes or repressed memories? Marta becomes convinced that Hector is medicating her in order to manipulate her personality and her memories. But the reader cannot be sure if she is right. Hector may be cool and distant and secretive, but he also seems to genuinely care for Marta’s well-being. In How to be a Good Wife, Emma Chapman has written a psychological mystery that keeps the reader off balance right to the end of the book.

Check out How to be a Good Wife @ the library!

Perfect by Racehel Joyce

In 1972, in suburban England, two smart and observant English boys, Byron and James, are somewhat obsessive about perfection. They want things to be right and earnestly try to correct anything that is amiss. But, although they are smart and observant and well-meaning, they are eleven year old children. They do not always understand what they have observed, particularly the dynamics of adult relationships. Consequently, their meddling creates unintended problems, particularly for Byron’s kind mother, Diane, who must strive every moment of her life to conform to the expectations of her exacting and controlling husband. When Diane inadvertently becomes involved with a working class family in the area, the boys perceive each minor mishap as a catastrophe. Their well-meaning meddling creates chaos that consumes Diane’s life. In an alternate story occurring in present day England, a middle-aged man, Jim, struggles to adapt to independence after the mental hospital in which he has spent his entire adult life is closed. Unlike other patients, Jim has no family to go to and must learn to cope on his own. When some co-workers at his new job befriend him, he finds himself with an unorthodox support group that helps him navigate the complexities of everyday life. The two stories eventually connect in the surprising conclusion of Perfect. Rachel Joyce is the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and in Perfect she has created another quirky, character-driven novel.

Check out Perfect @ the library!

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

In 1970, Chicago newspaperman Robert Hainey died suddenly in the early hours of the morning. He was thirty-five and left behind a wife and two young sons, one of whom was Michael Hainey, then six years old.  Michael’s mother, Barbara, never discussed the death with her sons and curtly cut off all questions. This only heightened Michael’s need to know. When he was older, he found his father’s obituaries in library archives. He read that his father died on a Chicago street far from both his home and his workplace. The phrase “after visiting friends” was used, although the family had no friends in that area of Chicago. The desire to know the facts remained with Michael into adulthood. He became a journalist and eventually used his training to investigate the circumstances of his father’s death. His father’s co-workers claimed to be unable to tell him anything. But that was an answer he was unwilling to accept. He worked for years, searching out old medical records and finding long-ago acquaintances of his father’s until he arrived at the difficult truth. But he considered truth, as difficult as it was, better than ignorance or misinformation. In After Visiting Friends, the author has written a memoir about the difficulty of growing up fatherless in 1970’s Chicago, a time and place when there were no grievance counselors and stoic silence was considered a virtue.

Check out After Visiting Friends @ the library! 

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

Claire Waverly, a highly-sought caterer, has an instinctive flair for cooking and more – her food has magical properties. She’s a bit of a solitary recluse, living and working alone in the house where she grew up, and she is perfectly content with her lifestyle. Then her sister, Sydney, returns home to Bascom, North Carolina, after a long absence, and disrupts everything. She has a five-year-old daughter, the niece Claire did not know she had, and she needs shelter from an abusive ex-boyfriend. As the two sisters confront each other and the abuse in their own shared past, Claire is forced to drop her guard, which opens the door for new possibilities.

Sarah Addison Allen describes Garden Spells as Southern-fried magical realism with a love story at its heart. It also has an ornery apple tree that flings prophetic apples at people. If you like Alice Hoffman, you might also like Sarah Addison Allen. Now is a good time to read Garden Spells and her other novels The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and The Peach Keeper. Her new novel Lost Lake, is set to release early in 2014.

Check out Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen @ the library!

We Live in Water by Jess Walter

 

We Live in Water is a wonderful collection of short stories by Jess Walter, author of previously reviewed Beautiful Ruins. Many of these stories are about parents, often working-class or even criminal class, and their relationships with children. Some succeed in making a moment or an hour in a child’s life better. Some, despite their best intentions, neglect and even endanger the children.  Most, despite being slightly bewildered, strive to do their best, as poor as that might be. These straightforward and simply told stories are about the poor, the uneducated, and the down-and-out of Spokane, Washington, people who seemingly never had a chance. A homeless man panhandles to buy his son a gift. Some con men are not as smart as they think they are. A man, intending to take his stepfather to his prison-release kidney dialysis treatment, instead takes him fishing, and this seems like the right thing to do. An ex-con doing community service reads to a second grader who brings the same book every time.  “Thief” is about a traditional family—two parents, three children. In “Thief,” Wayne, the father, is a blue-collar worker. He puts a lot of effort into trying to discover which of his children (the girl, the middle or the little) is stealing from the family vacation fund, a jar where Wayne throws his spare change. What he discovers surprises both Wayne and the reader. The final story in this book is not actually a short story but a list of facts about Spokane and Walter’s life there, grim facts that reveal the inspiration for these insightful stories.

 

Check out We Live in Water @ the library!