Room by Emma Donoghue
Everyone's been singing Room's praises for months, and I think I knew too much about this book before I actually read it. I knew that it was told from the point of view of Jack, a five year old boy with an unusual speaking style. I knew that Jack and Ma were being kept prisoner by Old Nick, but that Jack doesn't see it that way, since Ma is simply amazing about playing with him, teaching him, keeping him safe. I knew that eventually they do escape, but that Outside is scarier than Room for Jack. Room he understood, Outside he doesn't.
So I was prepared. The story is so original and Jack's voice so unique, but I wasn't struck by that, I expected it. The plot itself, was fairly simple. Full of determination, hope, love, but still not complex. The characters were amazing people, especially Ma, but I think that Jack as the narrator kept me at...
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain
Definitely a gripping story. At sixteen, CeeCee Wilkes is convinced by Tim Gleason, the man she is in love with, to help him kidnap the governor's wife. She will be in charge of guarding the woman, who turns out to be pregnant, at a remote cabin. As I write those sentences, it seems like a totally irrational thing, but CeeCee is alone, desperate to feel like someone loves her, trusts Tim with her whole heart. As I reader, I knew it was going to lead to trouble, but I could also sympathize with CeeCee.
Of course, the kidnapping goes horribly wrong. The woman dies during childbirth and CeeCee ends up keeping the infant.
CeeCee felt as if she were being swept along by a current she no longer had the will to stop. (37%)
CeeCee becomes Eve, beginning a whole new life on her own with the baby. A life full of lies, but also...
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
A Three Reasons Review
1. Why I chose this book
I read this for an on-line discussion group, but I was actually the one who nominated it. The theme was "prize winners" and this won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. It was short, which sadly sometimes plays into my book choices, and I liked the sound of the plot. Edith Hope, a romance novelist, is banished to a hotel in Switzerland to allow her time to more or less regain her senses after making a decision her friends and acquaintances found embarrassing. While there though, she comes to some realizations about herself and about love in general.
"I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode." (pg. 98)
2. Reasons I liked...
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
Reading this, I got caught up in its spell. It's not a perfect novel, but the story of obsession, loss and searching transfixed me.
Lilia was kidnapped by her father when she was young and has been constantly traveling since then, eventually leaving behind everyone everyone she meets, including those who care about her, like Eli her lover in New York. She just can't stay.
Forever is the most dizzying word in the English language. The idea of staying in one place forever was like standing at the border of a foreign country, peering over the fence and trying to imagine what life might be like on the other side, and life on the other side was frankly unimaginable.
Eli heads to Montreal in pursuit of her and meets Michaela, a young woman who says she knows how to contact Lilia. The basic story revolves around these three, their feelings for...
And it was hard to say later how any moment this ghastly could possibly become a routine, but he knew no on else in the city, and she knew where Lilia was. He waited for her every night after that in the all-night coffee house on the corner of St.-Laurent and Prince Arthur Boulevards, drinking coffee by the window and watching for her shape, for the platform boot emerging from the cab or the narrow figure walking slowly up the hill. She came in exhausted but strangely bright, sometimes feverish, glassy-eyed.
(pg. 149, Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel)
I'll be starting this one later today, so this is truly a random excerpt. I don't even know who "she" is, but I love the detail in the writing.
Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along. The rules are easy and I only cheated a little. Grab your ...
Some of the folks up here were smarter than anybody he had met at the college, and they read everything they could find, so that they salted their conversations with phrases from Milton, Homer, and Shakespeare. So why were they content to remain here? He wasn't sure, but if he had to put a name to his hunch, he might have called it shyness or, more precisely, since it was not fear, a disinclination to involve themselves in the machinations of society.
(pg. 36, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers by Sharyn McCrumb, ARC)
I've only started this book, but so far I like how it gives the different views on Appalachian people. The out of town press think of the locals as hillbillies, uneducated moonshine drinkers. The local man, who is trying to work his way up in the newspaper business realizes that the people who choose to live in the mountains do it for their own reason, they're not to stupid...