Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill

image from LibraryThing

The story of a marriage in bits and pieces.

Reading this felt like I was watching through a window at someone else's life or secretly finding pieces of notes found in the bottom of a purse.

This is the story of a marriage  - from beginning to middle to not quite the end.

It was haunting and beautiful and confusing and incredibly honest and depressing and hopeful and ridiculous and lingering.

It was a poem to the reality of marriage.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I am not sure I really like Olive Kitteridge. The book, I liked. The character...well. She is not a woman to be taken lightly, or ignored. She is a bore, a bully, an emotional bag of wind and well you get the picture. At least I think she is. Then again...

Let me try to explain.

This is one of those books that I had to keep asking myself if I really liked. There are TONS of characters and it doesn't seem to really fit together until you are way into the book. And each chapter has a cameo at least of Olive..she is the glue, or the peanut butter or at least the sticky jam that makes it hang together.

The book is a little like window peeking. As the reader, you are walking down the street in small town Maine (or Vermont ) and pausing at each house to listen in to what is really happening behind the doors. This is not the glitzy, sweet small town glimpse that idolizes the drugstore and the quaint seaside village with it's church steeples and odd characters. Instead, it's more like what people look like first thing in the morning without makeup or brushed teeth. It's a bit raw and uncomfortable...and that's precisely when Olive seems to appear.

But, there is a part of Olive, buried deeply in the rolls of her ample body, that is able to pause with her hand on the spiked haired head of an anorexic girl. This Olive tears up without wanting to, meaning to, or hardly even realizing as she talks to her dear husband Henry on the phone after his stroke. She is a bundle of opposites. She hates to be at home alone, but she also hates the jobs and people that are out there...

Life isn't what she expected...but she didn't really have any expectations...

I really liked the complicated pictures of the people in this book. I liked that I was often a bit confused. I liked that I didn't like Olive and then she took me totally by surprise. I liked that New England was not perfect and Norman Rockwellish. I liked that even when Olive took a step forward - like reconciling with her son - she still messed up and panicked and ended up right back where she started. I liked that the story just ended.

So - I guess it's ok not to love the main character, not to even like her most of the time, and end up with a book that makes me wonder and ponder and revisit.

The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer

This is the January book club book. It was my suggestion and I was a little nervous about it...I was told to make a suggestions that was light and fun to read. I was very afraid this was going to be light and dumb! But, I was pleasantly surprised. It was one that I really enjoyed. A great fast December read!

The premise is four women meet at a retirement party. They are unknown to one another. Each has been introduced to the reader in previous chapters - for some of them we know a little too much! Each lady comes to the party with fears and hesitations and a problem of some sort.

Through the course of the party they bump together - bond - decide to flee for chocolate - all in WAY to short a time. But, it's a book after all.

Each woman family problem: a daughter whose husband might be having an affair, a woman approaching the upper limits of her career and sure her coworker is attempting to run her out of her job, another whose husband really doesn't know she exists, and one who has a dream of opening her own spa. Over more than one dessert they decide to attempt to solve each others problems.

Now this sounds quite contrived and ridiculous - and actually it is. But you really get to like the women and that makes it easier to overlook the book's flaws. It's all about suspending disbelief...

My very favorite part is a wonderful description of what love is for a happily and very long married couple and how that has evolved and changed. Faye is describing what she misses most since her husband's death. It is poignant and telling - it made me believe that Thayer herself is in the midst of a very long-term and loving marriage. It brought tears to my eyes!!

This is the first of a series -and I didn't love it so much that I want to rush out and read the rest.

Testimony by Anita Shreve

I really didn't like this one either...I'm sort of on a roll here! And not a happy one!

This is the story of a horrible sex scandal at a small private Vermont school. The events were videotaped, posted on the internet and handed over to the headmaster. And lives are forever changed - three marriages destroyed, high school prospects evaporated and a life ended.

As one of the characters described...this is a story of doors. As the characters proceed from door to door - opening one after the other - there is no going back.

But, Shreve tells this story through 20 different narrators and not in chronological order. The opening chapter is the moment the headmaster watches the tape...from there it travels ahead two years to a researcher interviewing the main characters. The tale moves back and forth through time and through voices until the final chapters tie all the loose ends together.

So...
>the plot is incredibly depressing - especially if you are the parent of a teenager, work with teenagers or have any connection whatsoever with teenagers. these are the supposedly good kids in the school
>the story ignores conventions of narrator and time

There are redeeming moments...through out the entire book you read about a researcher seeking information about the events. The researcher is never identified. Just like the person holding the video camera is never revealed. Instead these two pay silent testimony to the events that unfolded around them - knowing all the sides, hearing all the secret details and sharing nothing. I sort of liked that.

There is also a sweet love story between two of the main characters - Silas and Noelle. It is innocent in a way that is in stark contrast to the events that open the tale. Silas is clearly two different people and it is only in the very end that you find out exactly why...why he cracked and why he opened a door that Noelle could not go through. That is really the only why that the reader discovers though.

The story is also about all the sides of a scandal. You hear from the main characters but you also hear from the fringe players - those who floated on the edges and reacted to the events. There were so many moments when the course of the event could have been changed - so many people who could have made a difference. But, when you hear their voices you realize the inevitability of this event.

Weighing the pros and the cons...

I wouldn't recommend it very strongly. It sort of reminds me of John Green's Saving Alaska. But much darker and more depressing - hearing from the adults somehow makes it even sadder!!!

Singing Hands by Delia Ray

image from LibraryThing

My good friend, Phyllis, recommended this book to me. She knows my connections to sign language. It's one of the new books in our school library this year.

Here is a great moment in time captured by the granddaughter of two deaf grandparents. So, it's based on many real family stories of Delia. The story centers around Gussie who hates that her deaf parents aren't like everyone else in Birmingham. It all comes to a head one hot summer. It begins with her humming loudly during the worship service at the deaf church where her father is the minister - she and her two hearing sisters are the only ones that can hear her.

Her nasty and obstinate side continues through clandestine searches through the boarders rooms upstairs and continues to her skipping Sunday school at the hearing church downtown. All this naughtiness comes to a screeching halt when she is discovered. Her punishment is a very eye-opening experience which changes the way she sees her family and her life.

I worked with hearing impaired students for 2 years in Ohio and lived with a hearing impaired adult. Nancy taught me sign language and a whole lot more. I think she would really like this book.

Nancy grew up in the mid 70s when signing was still not really very accepted. She went through hearing schools and was proud of her lip reading abilities. That is until she went to Galludet College in Washington DC. It was there that she understood and embraced what it meant to be deaf. She completely changed her life. She became a teacher of deaf children - starting a preschool for deaf kids in Wooster, OH. That's where I came to know her. Today, Nancy is teaching deaf children in Belize.

This book made me think about what life was like for Nancy - growing up different. When I lived in Ohio, Nancy and I went out to eat one time and sat at the table signing back and forth to each other. I didn't really think about it until the waitress came to our table and didn't know what to do. She stood and stared and then bent over and very carefully and clearly asked us for our order. There was a moment when I had to decide what to do... I answered her, she blushed and moved away. In that moment - I understood what it really felt like to be different - to be deaf.

Mercy by Jodi Picoult

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WOW! This is one of those I couldn't put down - until I got mad! Then I stopped. I didn't want it to end. I wanted it to end. I wanted to go to sleep. I couldn't go to sleep. I was a mess! I don't know whether to thank Kim for recommending it or to be mad at her for messing with sleep again!

This is another amazing Picoult story. She has a way of drawing the reader in to a world that you didn't even know you wanted to experience. I am so impressed every time I read one of her books. Even the one I really didn't love (Tenth Circle) - still drew me in to the story!!

The story opens with a garage sale. A woman has taken every bit of her husband's paraphernalia out of the house and displayed it on the lawn to be sold... she is more interested in emptying the house than in making money. Because of that - everything but a few pairs of boxers is sold. When her husband comes home that night he sees the remains of the sale as his wife walks away across the lawn.

This is a story about that kind of all or nothing love. There seems to be no gray. A commitment can not be partial. So - the solution is just as complete.

Anyway - this is the story of two marriages with many similarities and startling differences. Jamie and Maggie enter the story as Jamie climbs out of the cab of his pickup in front of the police station announcing that he killed his wife who was sitting in the cab beside him. Cameron, the police chief and his overly devoted wife Allie react very differently to this moment. Cameron with the weight of his position as the chief of his clan and Allie as a woman who understands giving yourself for another person.

Then Mia, enters the story and Cam is tempted in a way he never expects.

You can probably guess what will happen and you will only be partially right.

Read it!!

This was chosen for our October Book club book - Booker Babes!

The View From Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik

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This is WONDERFUL!! I laughed and I cried and I couldn't put it down. It's a classic Landvik!!

This is the story of Joe Andreson and finding his view of Mount Joy!

He's your typical high hockey star - a good kid whose father was killed and whose mother is trying. So, the story opens with Joe moving to Minneapolis as a senior in high school. Joe becomes fast pals with Darva, the girl who is amazing, but doesn't quite fit in and Kristi Casey the girl who is everything and will let you know that. Joe and Darva have a deep friendship that stays a friendship for a lifetime. Kristi is a user of everything: drugs, people, money, prestige, and most of all Joe. She pops in and out of his life at her whim. Joe falls under her spell for brief moments and then comes back to his real life.

And it's Joe's real life where the story actually is. He fills his life with friends - Ed Haugland being one. Ed is the saddened middle age man who owns Haugland Foods. Joe works for him and plays keyboard for him and stays with him as he slowly dies of MD. And Joe inherits the store he doesn't really want, But, it is the store where Joe finds his joy! On a slow day he decided to start odd little contests - all the groceries you can gather in two minutes for free, a free pie if you are buying eggs, a box of books if you can recite a Walt Whitman poem. The contests are often rigged to share with the less fortunate (grocery run) or to meet a newcomer-eventually to be wife (eggs) or to get others to meet.

As the grocery store becomes more successful, Joe's family grows and thrives and Kristi's star shoots across the sky as the voice of God. Her radio and then TV personea hidden by the layers of makeup and the talk that she spews. Yet, when she is really down and out - it's Joe she calls and Joe who is her friend.

I LOVED this book. Why? The fake of Kristi is so perfectly played against the reality of day to day joy of Joe's life. What we think we want way out there is not what we need close to home. Joe finds his Mount Joy right beside him as he watches his two sons and Darva's daughter who is now his daughter, as he stands close to Jenny the love of his life whose flute playing enchanted him the night he discovered his mother was an amazing teacher and his aunt was gay.

By the way, Mount Joy was named for the spot where Kristi and Joe stood and watched the most amazing northern lights in a drug induced state. Later, Kristi claimed that was the moment she first heard God speak her name. Joe remembers it as a time they stood in awe of nature and the pure happiness of friendship.

So, what is the view from your Mount Joy? Is it a place where secrets are shared and stories are told? Or is it the amazing view of a life lived well? Hmmmm.....

Your Oasis on Flame Lake by Lorna Landvik

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This is another great Lorna Landvik book.

Devera is a woman in the midst of a mid-life crisis - she has a wonderful family -a quirky husband who cares for her, two daughters - Lin in the midst of of teenage angst and Darcy a sweet and quirky 11 year old.

Her best friend is a spoiled rotten biddy name BiDi. BiDi believes that she is the best, the brightest, and the most of the small town of White Falls. Really she is a tease still living in her high school fantasies. Her first marriage to Big Mike fell apart and she fell in love again with Sergio, a high energy latin baker. BiDi's daughter Franny follows her father Big Mike's size and hockey skills much to BiDi's dismay. She expects her daughter to follow her size two shape.

Into all of this mix Dick, Devera's husband opens a night club in the redone basement of their home. He has decorated with movie posters, candles, black curtains and lots of love. He christens it Oasis on Flame Lake. And much to everyone's surprise it's a big hit.

But Dev makes a terrible choice that will shake their foudations. Franny is vicisouly attacked after she scores a winning goal in a hockey championship and the retailiations put Darcy, in grave danger.

Once again I like that Landvik takes a normal small town life and adds the drama of life. Each of the chapters in this book are written by one of 5 characters - Darcy, Sergio, Dick, BiDi or Dev. The consistency of their point of view added to my sympathy or lack there of.

Another strong recommendation!