The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

Towner has just returned to Salem, Mass. after fifteen years of estrangement from the place and her family.  She left after the suicide of her twin and returned when her stepgrandmother went missing.  Towner comes from a long line of lace readers, which is something like being a psychic.

The setting was beautiful.  The theory had a lot going for it.  The love interest a cop (yum).  I don't think that Barry pulled it off though.  It took many times of starting and at least 100 pages to get into the book.  Not a whole lot of lace reading going on despite the title.  Towner seemed many times like she was 50 instead of 32.  By the end I was disappointed that I had finally come to feel for the character.  I felt something like betrayal........the character was infact not the character I had come to know.  I needed to reread the book, and not in a good way.

Rating 2.5  There were some good parts in there.

Rating PG 13 Sexual abuse (alluded to), alcohol and drug abuse, child/spousal abuse, suicide.

The Cloud Chamber

The Cloud Chamber by Joyce Maynard


Nate Chance lives on a failing farm in Montana.  It is 1966 and he is fourteen.  The day that brings his family to its knees started early in the morning as usual.  But by the time the school bus returns Nate and his little sister Junie, their lives have been torn at the seams.  The police are in the drive way along with an ambulance.  Nate's bloody father is being dragged from the fields.

Nate's dad tried to kill himself.  The police can't find the gun and soon come back to the Chance farm to accuse Nate's mother of shooting her husband.  Nate and Junie are ostricized at school.  They are not told anything about their father.  They are never taken to see him.  Nate's mother is falling apart.  The farm has to be auctioned off.

The only thing keeping Nate going is his little sister and a strange Bible Study girl at school.  The two teens are partnered up for the science fair.  Nate's dad always had big dreams and knew so many wonderful things.  Nate decides that he and Naomi will build a cloud chamber just like his dad had always wanted to.  The cloud chamber will show radiation from stars long ago exploded. 

The story is sweet and unassuming.  It illustrates the hard times many families go through and how they are still able to pull through even though things may never be the same.

Rating 3.5  The book was a hair depressing but still an okay read for tweens on up.
Rating PG   Attemped suicide

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar

Although the book falls under work of fiction, I believe it is supposed to be semi-autobiographical. Esther is a young woman with what seems to be a bright future. She is able to travel from her home around Boston to New York for an internship that she won. While there she rooms in a hotel with ten other girls. She becomes more anxious and depressed and finds herself without any real goals. As her time in New York ends and she returns to her home in Boston she finds that she has not won a scholarship for her next years of school and is at loose ends.
She spirals into a queer depression. Finally after some half hearted suicide attempts, she buries herself under the crawl space of her house and swallows a bottle of pills. Once found, she is taken to a mental hospital. We are given intermittent glimpses of her past and future throughout the book. By the end Esther has lived through the suicide of a close friend and seems to have turned a corner in her own depression. She enters a room to take her concluding interview, the one that determines if she will be released from the hospital. Although book leaves it at that, there is a point previous where she mentions her baby. This leads me to believe that she is eventually released.

This book was on a list of books that I was determined to read. Knowing that this book is haled by many made me consider the distinct possibility that I would not like it. I was mostly right. I found the imagery and writing lovely. And I am sure if you have ever been very depressed you will be able to identify with the strange thoughts and feelings of hopelessness. What I didn't like was the thought that many young people may identify because of the popularity of the book. I felt like Esther had many more choices than she let on. And girls presently have multitudes of choices if they are willing to put forth the effort. I assume that Esther/Plath had a serious illness which I do not want to downplay. I don't think that they necessarily suffered from something that they could just think themselves happy out of. The book was just royally depressing and Esther didn't take enough responsibility for her situation.

Rating 2.5 I feel like a bit of a fence sitter here. I loved the imagery conjured by the writing. Some of the words were so lovely. I don't like that this book and many other 'memoirs' are so popular. There are somethings I would rather not know.
Also sometimes I was confused......not enough information was given to clear the muddy water.
Rating PG 13 Sex, suicide, drug use, shock therapy.

The Dogs Of Babel

The Dogs Of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

Linguistics professor Paul Iverson returns home one day to find his wife Lexy has died by falling from their apple tree. Their dog Lorelei was the only witness to the tragic accident.

Paul decides he must know what happened to Lexy. He takes leave from his teaching position and tries to teach Lorelei to speak, in hopes that she can then tell him what happened.

The story rotates through chapters of coming to know Lexy through Paul's memories and Paul's desperate attempts at dog linguistics. The idea is fresh and interesting. The story wrenched my heart. Lexy was quirky and off balanced. Paul, normally black and white, deviates in order to do what he can for the love that has overtaken his life and then disappeared.

Rating 4 Sweet and sad

Rating PG13 language and nongraphic sex

The Pact (a love story)

The Pact (a love story) by Jodi Picoult

This is my second time through this book but I really love Jodi Picoult's way of taking twists and turns and tackling timely and touchy issues.

Chris and Em grew up in each other's pockets. Both families always expected them to eventually fall in love and get married. Their last year of high school begins and their futures seem right on track. They have been in a relationship since their early teens. They each have a bright future with their individual talents. To all eyes looking in, they seem like the perfect couple with more maturity than everyone else their age.

Then in the middle of the night their parents are awakened with a phone call sending them screaming to the local hospital. Chris is injured and Em has been killed by gun shot. What seems to be a random act of violence or an accident becomes what one family believes to be a murder and the other a suicide pact gone awry. The families of Chris and Em have been like family to each other. Now with one child dead and the other alive the neighbor's relationships are ripped to shreds.

We learn about Emily through those left behind......everyone of them telling the story of the person they thought they knew. All leading up to the terrible truth about how and why Em died.

Picoult again makes me ache for her characters. Even though this story is tragic I still feel like it was a love story. I feel for the parents and most certainly for Chris. How will they ever move beyond this pivotal moment that spun their lives in a direction they never saw coming?

Rating 4.5 A shocking emotional roller coaster. Loved it, but didn't feel as much for the parents as I did for Chris. I know I shouldn't be judging them because who knows what I will really know about my kids when they get older? But at some points in the book I really disliked the mothers, especially Em's.

Rating R Teen sex, sex, sexual abuse (which leaves me shuddering and forcing my kids to avoid public restrooms to this day), and suicide/gun violence.