Review: The Flight Attendant

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a pretty good, quick read. It's about an alcoholic flight attendant who wakes up in a hotel room in Dubai next to a man who is dead, covered in blood. She creeps out of the room, and begins lying - to her crewmates, to the police, and to everyone - and hopes to evade being connected to the murder. Naturally, that doesn't happen, and she finds herself swept up into the investigation. She was a sympathetic character and the plot moved quickly, but it wasn't a book I think I'll remember.

View all my reviews

Review: The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir

The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir by Laura Jean Baker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a tough one to review. I have all the respect in the world for the author's writing style and honesty in her memoir. That aside, her life choices were difficult to stomach.

Baker and her husband live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She is a professor and he is a lawyer. She suffers from depression, but discovers that the oxytocin that comes from being pregnant and breastfeeding seems to treat her mental illness. She decides (her husband more reluctantly) to continue having children far past what the couple can handle economically and mentally.

Interwoven with their story of economic distress, marital difficulties, and children - lots of children - are stories of the law firm that her husband runs. Patronized mostly by people living on the fringe and involved in the ever-worsening drug problems that plague the Midwest, his firm struggles to break even, let alone to support their growing family.

This story was frustrating, but as a memoir, it stands strong.

View all my reviews

Review: Fruit of the Drunken Tree

Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was spectacular. It takes place in Bogota, Colombia. The daughter of an affluent family strikes up an unlikely (but predictable) friendship with a young maid who comes to work in her home. The story alternates between their two points of view during the great political unrest of Bogota in the 1990's. It's devastating at times, as the girls don't understand the significance of many of the choices they make, and because there is a sense of determinism based on their classes that pervades the book. That said, it is a beautifully written book.

View all my reviews

Review: Priestdaddy: A Memoir

Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I kept seeing this one reviewed and finally picked it up. It is about a woman who grows up with a father who is a Catholic priest - I'll let you learn how that happened, but it was not nearly as scandalous as it could have been. If her childhood was unusual (which it was), her adulthood allows her to relive it, as she and her husband move back in with her parents after an economic setback. Told very humorously, and like all good memoirists, honestly, this book kept my attention.

View all my reviews

Review: An Ocean of Minutes

An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really inventive book. It is about a couple who is separated after a major flu epidemic, when the husband contracts the flu and the wife agrees to time travel forward to fund his getting the antidote. Naturally, her travel goes awry, and she lands in a dystopic future, unable to contact him. Reminiscent of The Heart Goes Last and Station Eleven, ultimately this was a love story of sorts.

View all my reviews

Review: Pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book on the recommendation of a synagogue friend. It was fascinating, with great characters and plotting. It was about several generations of Koreans during the Japanese annexation of Korea. The Koreans are left desolate and are ostracized; this family turns to several different avenues to survive.

I enjoyed getting to know more about that period of history. But most of all, I enjoyed getting to know the characters - and the family secrets that followed them.

View all my reviews

Review: Educated

Educated by Tara Westover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was great! I read it after seeing it on the Rooster list. Similar to The Glass Castle, it was a memoir about a woman who grew up under circumstances that we would consider negligent. However, what I liked most about this book was how Westover depicted her life in a way that, until she begins to break away from her (separatist, home-schooling, abusive) family, seems at worst odd. There are untreated injuries, siblings who run away, and canned goods stocked for Armageddon. Then as Westover comes to terms with her childhood, as a reader, I was more able to see how her upbringing was abusive and negligent, not quaint and odd.

Ultimately, Westover seeks education, and education wins. This was a great read.

View all my reviews

Review: The Rooster Bar

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

John Grisham's books are always a fun read. This one followed three friends graduating from a for-profit scammy law school with no real prospects for employment. They get together and figure out how to make money ... untraditionally. I thought the character development really stood out in this book - it was really interesting to learn about each character's back story and how they came to attend this law school. Then, how those backgrounds led each of them to have the skills necessary to pull off their plan.

View all my reviews

Review: The Half Brother

The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

WOW. This was quite an epic. Recommended by my Norwegian friend Stig, this book possessed me for months. It was about three generations of a family living in Oslo during and after WWII. Translated from the original Norwegian, it was written very subtly, with moments sometimes not hitting me until I was a few pages past the scene. The character development was really good, and the narrative as a whole was ... epic. Perhaps my only hesitation in a stronger recommendation was the length - I definitely got lost at points in the book, willing it to get to the next chapter.

View all my reviews

Review: The Life She Was Given

The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My neighbor Sue recommended this to me and it was a really unusual read. It was about a woman who, as a young girl, was sold by her abusive mother to a circus, because she was an albino. Over time, she builds a family at the circus, but not without drama. There are alliances, betrayals, and complications throughout her life. The plotting of the book was spectacular, the character development bordered on trite, but was well-written enough that I still enjoyed the read. Great ending, too.



View all my reviews

Review: The Lost

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was AMAZING. I was familiar with it but never made it a point to pick it up. I found it at a bookstore in (of all places) Kansas City, and took a chance. WOW. It is hard to categorize this book - part memoir, part world history, part American Jewish history, Mendelsohn covers a lot of ground. And I could not put it down.

Mendelsohn opens by describing his Miami Beach relatives, who would look at him as a child and comment how much he looks like a particular relative who died in the Holocaust. This sticks with him through his childhood and into adulthood, and is one of a few influences that drives him to want to learn about his family's history. Rather than be satisfied with "he, his wife, and their four children died in the Holocaust," he embarks on a decades-long quest to learn what actually happened to his particular relatives. In doing so, he really personalizes the tragedy of the Holocaust in a way that is both individualized and universal. He is meticulous in his research, and in his descriptions of his reactions to every piece of information he uncovers.

This is not an easy book to read - it's quite readable, but has a lot of descriptions of Holocaust murders that are, appropriately, awfully disturbing. But I also found it a hopeful book, and one that told a very complete personal story, from beginning to end.

View all my reviews

Review: The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book a while ago, then it sat on the shelf, then Web read it, didn't love, so it sat on the shelf for another while, then I finally picked it up. I did love it! It is about a British diplomat whose wife is killed while they are stationed in Kenya. As he begins to investigate the circumstances of her death, he learns that she may have been uncovering a major public health issue that powerful people didn't want publicized. The balance of the book is about what she discovered and how he tries to avenge her death.

Like his other books, this had plenty of intrigue and twists. Though not a "spy" book like his classic works, it had a similar pace and plotting. It wasn't fast-moving, but the subtleties were well-delivered, and the story overall compelling.

View all my reviews

Review: Asymmetry

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a frustrating book. The first third was a well-written and enjoyable read about a young woman who falls for an older man, both writers. This made sense with the title of the book (their relationship, due to their age and experience, was asymmetrical on many levels.) The second third of the book was about a man detained at airport security because of racial profiling. Then the final third of the book supposedly tied the first two together - except I don't believe it did - not well at least. After such good character development in the first third, and such good plot in the middle, I was expecting a great crescendo at the end to tie it all together. Alas, no luck.

Perhaps this is an insiders' book - one that is better enjoyed by writers and critics. But for a professional book-lover, it missed the mark.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews