Review: That Kind of Mother

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The premise of the book (a white woman hires a black nurse to help her with her infant; they become close, and when the nurse dies in childbirth, the woman adopts her child) caught my eye when I was at the library. I really, really enjoyed reading this. I think I'm far enough away from my own children's infancy to be able to read of other mothers' experiences without my anxiety spiking, and those descriptions in this book - about sleep deprivation, breastfeeding, spousal relationships - rang true.

The specifics of a white family raising a black child are touched upon, although not comprehensively. More effort is dedicated to the relationship between the adoptive mother and her adopted child's biological sister, who has also just had a child. The family that is built across these people is non-traditional, to be sure, and the challenges they face are more than many families do. But I really loved reading about their relationships, and found myself rooting - hard - for the characters. A lovely read.

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Review: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite myself, I liked this book. I avoided it for some unknown reason for several months, while it was everywhere. Then one day saw it at the library and jumped in.

Eleanor is a woman who is stuck in her ways, perhaps on the autism spectrum, and who lives a very regimented life. She misses social cues and is very quick to dismiss people and ideas. When she meets an IT manager at her officer, and they save a stranger's life together, she is suddenly thrust into social situations that cause her to question her perspective, and open her life, just a little, to potential.

This was not the "fun" book its title suggests, no The Rosie Project for example, but it was a great read. Eleanor is a supremely sympathetic character, and it is impossible not to root for her. I hope Honeyman follows this up and tells us what Eleanor is up to now.

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Review: Imperfect Birds

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lamott is my rabbi for many things spiritual (other than my actual rabbi, of course.) I've found her fiction to be uneven, but likable. I really liked this book. It was about a teenager and her relationship with her parents, all three of them flawed. Her mother was particularly relatable - clearly the "Anne" character in the book - she discloses to the reader all her worries and flaws and fears, and has a lovely and (too?) perfect best friend who helps her with them, a husband who loves her, and a relationship with her daughter that is tumultuous and, frankly, kind of terrifying as the parent of a (now) preschooler. Like many of Lamott's books, fiction and not, I found myself wanting to save different scraps of text from the book - phrases and ideas that I loved or gave me the feels.

I just found out that there are two other books about this mother-daughter duo, so I'm off to find those...

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Review: The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was described as "an adult The Westing Game" so I jumped at the chance to choose it as my Book of the Month. Meh. It was a combination between a puzzle from a last will and testament that the characters are trying to solve, and a family psychodrama. I didn't think it did either of those things particularly well. The characters were not very well-developed, and the plot was reasonably predictable. Not a fan.

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