4 stars Way up in the mountains of West Virginia far from civilization live the hill people. They live by the old ways, they believe in right and wrong and nothing in between and they don't betray their own. Wren lives in a small cabin further away than most with her snake-handling preacher father and her once spirited mother. After a healing gone wrong leaving Wren's mother without her best friend, life on the mountain changes dramatically for all of them. Growing up without things isn't easy but living there after you know the truth is impossible. This quietly told story is as deadly as a snakebite but also a paradox of love and hate, religious faith and modern medicine, miracles and madness.
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4 stars A group of adults and their tribe of unsupervised kids ranging in ages are on an extended holiday along the coast. The adults spend all day drinking and laying around while the kids have the run of the estate to the ocean beyond. The kids are perfectly happy to not have their parents looking out for them and seem to be taking care of things just fine. That is until the hurricane hits and then the parents seem more like chickens with their heads cut off with no practical way to keep them all safe. A transition of power takes place and the kids take control. The narrator is a teenage girl who is practically the only parent her young brother has ever known. Evie's brother and his deaf friend, both budding naturalists, spend the time reading a children's bible and relate these religious stories to nature and what is going on around them. It is a book of juxtapositions - the kid's wisdom vs. the parent's ineptitude, nature's beauty vs. nature's wrath and fighting for what you believe in vs. self medicating and giving up. Lydia Millet's brilliant prose speaks about so many key issues that it is difficult to shelve it into one genre. Family relationships , coming of age, climate change and post-apocalyptic survival and religion are all represented and dissected. A concise history of an ancient misunderstood people who migrated all over Northern Europe setting up trade as far east as Asia, as far west as North America and as far south as the tip of Spain. Both seafaring and farmers, the Vikings are often dipicted as savage and brutal barbarians but this book shows that their craftsmanship, boatbuilding and other innovations were shared with other cultures. While some of what we know from tv and other books did leave me with a violent first impression of my ancient relatives, Neil Price helps us understand the intricacies of their religion, government and exploration that made for interesting reading and gave me a new perspective of this amazing culture. A mother looks at her grown children, grandchildren and her own life as she searches for truth. Astrid's husband is dead, her grown children are scattered and she has agreed to house her teenage granddaughter but she doesn't feel fulfilled until the day she admits that she is in love with a woman. Female focused look at her roles as mother, wife, caregiver and friend. Other women in the book find their voice as single parents or friends being brave and standing up for individuality. There is nothing earth shattering about this novel, but it is a sweet story for fans of introspective family relationships. I just recently listened to the audio and highly recommend it as well.
A Jewish Viennese family whose talent for the musical arts can't even save them from being persecuted under Hitler's regime. Mother, father and young daughter find themselves on a boat to Bolivia hoping that their 15 year old son will join them soon from Switzerland. They must begin their lives all over again not speaking the language and dealing with the new reality of altitude sickness, new foods, finding work and losing touch with family. Orly, their daughter must leave her best friend behind and even though she makes other friends, she can never forget her soulmate. There are the stirrings of Orly searching for her sexuality and the life in South America that sets this book apart from other WWII refugee stories. This book is a love story between people, animals and the land. It is written in flowing prose that sets the tone and offers lush descriptions of the landscape in various areas around India. Each section is about people and the land, connected in some way through love or violence. It is introspective, magical in sections and illuminating about different cultural myths or the landscape. An unusual debut, the author evokes deep emotion and shares what feels like age old stories. I found the first section particularly interesting about a park service caretaker and his new bride who happens to be sensitive to the local flora and speaks to ghosts.
Paris 1927 - The story takes us on a vivid journey through the busy streets of Paris away from the crowds where we meet a handful of people and connect the dots between them during one day. Woven in so many human emotions, the characters go about their lives waiting for lost loves, hiding from money lenders, waiting for fame and most of all, keeping their secrets hidden. The lush writing is rich in the sights, smells and sounds of that period in Paris where celebrities share a glass with nobody. Your heart goes out to these broken souls as they look for meaning in their lives. For all fans of everything Parisian history and those artists who made it "the City of Light".
Cady almost destroys what is left of her family when she chooses to go to Harvard just months after her beloved older brother committed suicide there. She goes to the school hoping to find out why he did what he did and spends most of her time seeking out his teachers, friends and roommates looking for answers than going to classes. Eric suffered from schizophrenia and now suddenly, Cady is hearing voices as well. These ghosts seem to be helping her find the answers but, the more she uncovers the more dangerous her life becomes. I loved the storyline working between modern Harvard and some of its illustrious past. The author's choice of this school's history while working in a delicate telling of the trauma impacting a family dealing with mental illness is top-notch. I look forward to reading more fiction from this author as I already enjoy her non-fiction essays with her author mother, Lisa Scottoline. This works for fans of a little bit of history, families in crisis and a touch of the supernatural.
Lizzie, an attorney, gets a frantic call from an old college friend who has just been accused of his wife's brutal murder. Her life is at odds with a troubled marriage so she packs up and heads out to sort through Zach's case. At the center of Amanda's murder seems to be the group of friends from their children's day school and the wild party they all attended the night of the murder. What Lizzie and the reader will come to learn is that everyone has secrets and every marriage is not necessarily a good one. A tense legal thriller perfect for fans of BIG LITTLE LIES and all those books featuring "perfect couples" who are anything but.
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