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Monthly Archives: November 2012

Drinking: A Love Story

This is written by Caroline Knapp, the friend about whom Gail Caldwell wrote in Let’s Take The Long Way Home.  Knapp is a Wonderful writer, so honest and thoughtful and measured.  She had my attention the whole way through this very sad tale of her years as a young alcoholic.  I was so grieved to […]

Song Without Words

SO boring.  Why did I finish it?  Liz and Sarabeth are childhood friends.  Sarabeth’s mother commits suicide when they are teenagers.  Liz’s daughter Lauren tried to commit suicide.  It brings Liz and Sarabeth’s friendship to a faultline.  So many blind alleys and red herrings in this book.  Liz’s husband Brody’s boss.  Son Joe.  Nothing tied […]

The Tiger’s Wife

by Tea Obreht.  Natalia grows up with her grandfather in a Balkan country, visiting the zoo every week to feed the tiger.  Her grandfather tells her the story of a young girl wedded to a lout in his childhood town.  After feeding a wild tiger that has been terrorizing the village and the subsequent disappearance […]

This Is How It Ends

Augh.  Another sad book!  And I didn’t expect this one to be sad.  A lightly told story of Addie and Bruno, second cousins who fall in love mid-life in Ireland.  If I had known how sad the ending was, I am not sure I would have read it.  Probably good I didn’t know because it […]

The Wrong Mother

Yikes, this is my kind of thriller!!  Scary but not gruesome, full of great characters.  Lots of rumination on the life of the mother and its hurricane emotions.  I love this book.

let’s take the long way home

Such a sad story of Caldwell’s later-in-life, once-in-a-lifetime friendship with Caroline Knapp.  They bond over the writer’s life and dogs.  Caroline dies very suddenly.   A wrenching read.