Month: April 2016

Imagine the epic drama of various mythologies playing out in modern day Virginia suburbs. The Library at Mount Char is a darkly humorous story set in a strange and unique world where anything can happen. It can get really gruesome, so it is not for the faint-hearted!

“You can adjust to almost anything.”

Carolyn has lived at the Library, the hub of all knowledge, since she was eight years old. She and eleven other librarians have been under the tutelage of Father, a mysterious man who might be a god. Each librarian has their own catalog to study and they are forbidden to share information with each other. One day Father disappears without a trace and the librarians lose access to the Library. Father has many enemies. Was he abducted or murdered? Will whoever harmed him come after the librarians next? Or did Father abandon them? Carolyn recruits an unsuspecting plumber named Steve to help them solve the mystery, so they can plan their next move.

“When [Father] disappeared he was working on something called regression completeness,” Peter said. “It’s the notion that the universe is structured in such a way that no matter how many mysteries you solve, there is always a deeper mystery behind it.”

Hawkins created his own unique mythology for this book, which made it a really fun world to explore. The story is told via the alternating perspectives of Carolyn, Steve, and a tough-talking Homeland Security agent named Erwin. It has an equal balance of darkness and humor. The writing style reminded me of Ready Player One and The Martian–the dialogue style, the sense of humor, and the straightforward storytelling. It is really engaging and entertaining. I can’t go too much into the details of the book because all of the surprise weirdness is part of the fun!

The Atul had been linguistically isolated. Their grammar was nearly impenetratable, and they had some exotic cultural norms. One such was the notion of uzan-iya, which was what they called the moment when an innocent heart first contemplated the act of murder. To the Atul, the crime itself was secondary to this initial corruption.

To get a feel for the book, you can read the first chapter (PDF file) at the author’s website. Some things to know before jumping in:

(1) The author plops you down in this unusual world without any explanation. I found great comfort in knowing that I was supposed to be in the dark! The actual sequence of events is easy to follow, but the rules of the world and character motivations were slowly revealed over the entire course of the almost 400-page novel. Anything can happen and it does. (Except magic, that’s just silly!) Just go with the flow and know that your questions will be answered…eventually. For me, that started around page 230 but I can be a little slow to figure things out!

(2) It can get very gory and violent: “ropey guts dangling from fluorescents,” decapitated heads, immolation, etc. Anytime David appears in a scene, there is a good chance that it is about to get messy!

(3) In the beginning, I was overly concerned with keeping track of all the librarians and their catalogs. That wasn’t necessary, because only a few of the librarians play a significant role in the story: Carolyn (Language) and David (Murder/War), and to a lesser extent Michael (Animals), Jennifer (Healing) and Margeret (Death/Afterlife). If you are interested in keeping track of the other librarians, I found this spoiler-free character guide written by the author very helpful.

(4) I loved the concept of a heart coal, the memory that a person holds onto for comfort(warmth) and survival when their world has reached its darkest, coldest point. “Faint comfort is better than no comfort at all.”

“The problem with a heart coal is that the memory always diverges from the actual thing. She remembers an idealized version of her son. She’s forgotten that he was selfish, that he enjoyed giving little offenses. … If he came back now it wouldn’t help. He would be gone again soon enough, only this time she would no longer have the comfort of the illusion.”

There are a few things that bothered me, but those things did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. These are the kinds of things I like to read after I’m finished with a book or to help me through a part that I am struggling with, so this next section is skippable!
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(1) After we find out what happened to Father and witness the fallout from that reveal, the book continues for another 100 pages and we discover the answers to the remaining mysteries ([spoiler]Carolyn’s backstory and her connection with Steve[/spoiler]). This last quarter is the only part where I started to resent answers being withheld for so long. I didn’t understand why Carolyn was fixated on Steve, so I lost interest [spoiler]during his captivity[/spoiler] in those pages. I also felt ‘meh’ towards Carolyn the entire book. I think if had a fuller picture of her history earlier, I think I would have had deeper, more conflicted feelings towards her. I did connect strongly with Steve and his tenaciously loyal lions. (I told you this book was weird!)

(2) Some of Father’s enemies were mentioned with enough specificity and frequency that I was expecting some of them to play a bigger part, but they were relegated to the background. [spoiler]I was expecting some kind of big boss battle with tentacle monster Barry O’Shea.[/spoiler]

(3) Occasionally unnatural dialogue. I didn’t write down any examples, but it was mostly a case of things that are common in speaking sounding weird in the written format.

“With this particular species of crazy, you stop trying to make things better. You start trying to maximize the bad. You pretend to like it. Eventually you start working to make everything as bad as possible. It’s an avoidance mechanism. It can’t actually work. … That’s why they call it crazy.”

During the time I was reading this book, a tiger named Nala was found roaming the streets of a nearby town. I was much more suspicious of this event than I would have been under normal circumstances! 😉 The Library at Mount Char is very strange and entertaining story about the dangers of letting our pain consume us. I was really impressed by how all the crazy threads were tied up. I love the author’s imagination! I rounded up from 3.5 to 4 Stars, because I will absolutely read whatever crazy thing Hawkins publishes next! I hope that there will eventually be another book set in this world.

“In the service of my will, I have emptied myself.”

__________________________

Other points of interest:

Guest Post: The Mythological Roots of The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins | Scott Hawkins Reddit AMA #1 | Scott Hawkins Reddit AMA #2
My favorite part of the first AMA is where he talks about using his natural voice, after spending too much time sounding “grownup and writery.” Intersting to consider in any creative endeavor.

My favorite passage of the book:

She was crying. Steve didn’t stop her, didn’t try to say anything. There was nothing to say.

As the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.

Heart-breaking and politically relevant memoir with an authentic voice. Diane Guerrero, actress in the popular TV shows Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, tells the story of her parents’ deportation and the devastating effect it had on all of their lives. It reveals the circumstances that many undocumented immigrants live with on a daily basis. This title will be released on May 3, 2016.

Human beings are not categorically bad because of their mistakes. They can learn from their errors and get back on track. No one should be forever written off because of one part of his or her history.

Diane Guerrero was only fourteen years old when she walked into an empty house and discovered her parents were detained for deportation. Diane, an American citizen, was left to fend for herself and no government official ever contacted her. With the help of friends, she was able to continue her education in the United States, but she never saw her parents on US soil again. After years of secrecy, even from some of those closest to her, Diane went public with her family’s story in an LA Times op-ed on November 14, 2014. She also appeared on CNN.

Each chapter begins with a large photograph and I really liked that the photos were interspersed with the story, rather than gathered in the middle or at the end. It is more impactful to see the images when they are most relevant. The writing style is casual and conversational. There is slang and textspeak scattered throughout the text. I have complained about slang usage other books, but that is usually in the case of an author imitating someone else’s voice. In this book, I thought it helped show Diane’s personality and made her voice more authentic. I also think it makes it more accessible to a wider audience. Plus, if there is ever a moment to use ‘OMG’, meeting a president would be it! However, I was glad the textspeak was used sparingly. Diane writes with great compassion and perspective when discussing her family, friends, and former classmates. The central focus of this book is the plight of undocumented immigrants, but she also touches on the impact that media portrayals of race have on self-esteem and the hopelessness inherent in the poverty cycle.

Life does that to us. Deep down, we know what may come to pass, but we hope that what we dread can be permanently put off. We convince ourselves it may never occur, because if it were going to, it would’ve already. Then without warning, reality socks us in the face and we realize how foolish it was to believe we’d been spared. And however many years we spent agonizing about what tragedy may come, the sting is no less severe when it does.

Diane’s parents and their young son left Columbia for the United States to escape political instability and to start a better life. Five years after their arrival, Diane was born. She grew up in an economically disadvantaged Boston neighborhood with strong community bonds. She grew up with a lot of love and her parents did the best they could to give their children a good life, but the heavy weight of secrecy and the fear of deportation always lingered overhead. Her parents worked hard and made attempts to become legal citizens, but it is a long, arduous process and there were many insurmountable obstacles. The prospect of doing something that would catch the eye of the authorities made it a scary process to even begin. One of the most heartbreaking sections in the book involved people who make careers out of taking advantage of undocumented immigrant’s hopes to become legal citizens and their inability to report crimes. I also really felt for her brother Eric, who was caught up in a difficult situation that was not of his choosing.

The day you finally start dealing with your past is the day you stop dragging into the present.

It is difficult to read about any child going through what Diane went through when she was separated from her parents. The fear and sadness described in the chapters surrounding her parents’ deportation was palpable. She describes the loneliness of living like a guest and the overwhelming pressure of having to become an adult at such a young age. A sense of hopelessness eventually creeps in and she cast aside dreams of success in the entertainment industry. The stress of everything that had happened and the lack of outlet eventually became too much to bear. She speaks honestly about her battle with severe depression during college.
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Our passions don’t just compel us, they can also heal us.

Reentry into creative pursuits gave Diane solid footing during her recovery. Since her career is just beginning and the central focus of the book is her personal story, there are only a few chapters about the entertainment industry. She writes about a few of her experiences on the sets of Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin. It is especially funny to read about what she thought OITNB was when she auditioned, versus the award-winning phenomena it became! However, the specter of her parent’s absence always lingers in the background. She reveals the emotional blocks she had to overcome to make peace with the past and how her experiences made her a more empathetic actress. Her success in the entertainment industry also gave her a greater platform to help others.

Any cause worth taking up requires courage. And you can’t wait until you’re feeling bold to act; if we did, most of us would never move a toe. You have a step out in spite of the fact that you feel like the world’s biggest scaredy-cat. And I often do.

The short “Call to Action” chapter at the end is the only part of the book that is overtly political and it applies her individual story to the national scale. She discusses the contributions that immigrants make to society, as well as the impracticalities of building walls at the border and mass deportations. She emphasizes the importance of voting and writing elected officials.

We don’t do all of our growing up between birth and adolescence or even our twenties. If we’re fortunate, we never stop.

This is one woman’s story, but it is a story shared by many. I really admired Diane’s strength, determination, and honesty. Even if a person disagrees with Diane’s conclusions, an open-minded reading of her book could go a long way towards toning down the dehumanizing rhetoric directed towards immigrants. It is one of my favorite celebrity memoirs and I’m definitely a fan for life now! I recommend it, especially those interested in reading about the human side of immigration issues. This book deals with some difficult issues, but I think it could be inspiring and informative for older teens as well. If the topic of this book interests you, I recommend the fictional book The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez.

I received this book from the LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer’s program, in exchange for an honest review.

A wild ride through the ice roads of Alaska. The plot is far-fetched, but it is a fun adventure. The stars of this book are the brutal setting and a bright ten-year-old girl named Ruby, who is totally deaf.

After several months of separation, wildlife photographer Matt is supposed to be traveling from a remote Inupiaq village to Fairbanks, Alaska to reunite with his wife Yasmin and his daughter Ruby. Yasmin and Ruby are anxious to see him, but he never arrives. The authorities inform Yasmin that he is presumed dead in a catastrophic fire that destroyed the village he was staying in; there were no survivors. Yasmin refuses to believe that he is dead, despite the evidence she is presented with. When the police refuse to search for him, she decides that she is going to find him by any means necessary. Yasmin and Ruby head out on a dangerous road trip through the Arctic Circle to Anaktue, hoping to find Matt before he can succumb to the brutal conditions. Not only do they have the cruel, unforgiving terrain and weather to contend with, but there is a sinister pair of headlights following in the distance. Is it just another ice road trucker or is it someone who wants to stop Yasmin from finding Matt?

A memory played out in front of her, vivid in the darkness. … She’d had this sense before that time was not linear, but bending back on itself. with current emotions finding a sense of themselves in the past.

The Quality of Silence is like a 90s action movie, especially the conclusion. It is completely far-fetched from beginning to end; this is is a story about a woman who who travels through the dangerous Arctic Circle in the depths of winter, with no experience and her ten-year-old daughter as a passenger! Once I stopped over-thinking it, I enjoyed the ride. The story alternates between Yasmin’s and Ruby’s perspectives, with the occasional interlude from some of the supporting characters. The perspective changes are abrupt and only separated by a paragraph break. It was confusing at first, but the voices are distinct enough that it is easy to adjust. Most of the book is set in Alaska, but there are some flashbacks to the early days of Yasmin and Matt’s relationship.

In the Arctic tundra, it was impossible to feel important but simple to feel connected to something uncircumscribed by time and distance.

The setting was my favorite part! Lupton did an amazing job creating a chilly atmosphere and a hostile environment rife with danger. The cold is described as “predatory and remorseless” and the land as “not just passively hostile but actively aggressive.” A large portion of the book is inside of an 18-wheeler’s cabin, and I felt like I was sitting in there with them. My stomach lurched as they sped through the frozen mountainous terrain!

She felt knifed by love, winded by the sharpness of it. The sensation was oddly familiar, a harsher version of the pain she’d felt in their early days, long before marriage and a child, before there was any tangible security that he’d still be with her tomorrow. And time was no longer stretched out and linear but bent back on itself and broken into fragments so that the young man she’d loved so passionately was as vividly recalled and equally present as the husband she’d argued with eight days ago. [Yasmin]

I never really warmed to Yasmin. She is movie-star gorgeous and an astrophysicist, with exceptional luck and skill. [spoiler]Yasmin’s professional background is used to explain her relative success at trucking despite inexperience.[/spoiler] Despite her supposed brilliance, the decisions she makes are baffling, even accounting for the shock of discovering that her husband is most likely dead. I was mortified that she was in a situation where leaving her ten-year-old daughter with random truckers seemed like a good idea! In the beginning of the book, Yasmin was concerned that Matt was having an affair with an Inupiaq woman and I’m still not sure why visually confirming that there was wildlife in Alaska made her immediately certain that Matt was trustworthy.

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“She has to learn to survive in the real world,” Yasmin had said. …”The real world thing, it’s bollocks. The world is a million different places and Ruby will find the place she wants to be.” [Matt]

Yasmin is also constantly on Ruby’s case about using her speaking voice. I felt so uncomfortable every time she asked Ruby to “use her words.” As frustrating as her requests are, Yasmin’s motivations became understandable and her concerns came from a good place. Yasmin does experience quite a bit of character growth throughout the book. The time alone in the cab gives Yasmin a chance to bond with Ruby and finally listen to her “voice.” Whether they find Matt or not, the arduous journey becomes a pivotal point in the mother-daughter relationship.

Being deaf isn’t something I can change. Mum doesn’t understand this but I don’t know if I even want to. It’s my Ruby-world, a quiet world that I look at and touch and sometimes taste but don’t hear. Dad says quietness is beautiful. So maybe my world is lovelier than other people’s. And maybe making sounds I can’t hear in my quiet world would spoil everything.

I didn’t care whether they found Matt alive, dead, or at all, but I did care that Ruby made it out of this trip safely. She was such an awesome kid! She was so resourceful and I loved how she utilized technology, especially her eavesdropping method. She was also very articulate. She expressed the reasons why she was uncomfortable using her speaking voice with such clarity and confidence. Yasmin is constantly pressuring Ruby to integrate with the hearing world, but Ruby manages the “real world” on her own terms.

Another favorite character was Adeeb Azizi, a trucker Yasmin and Ruby meet during their journey. Adeeb and Ruby are both treated like outsiders and they form a quick bond. Yasmin gained a different perspective from watching them interact. [spoiler]I wish he had played a bigger role in the story and I hope the check Yasmin handed him was enough to cover the damage to his truck![/spoiler]

What we know is filtered by our flaws, and sometimes turned more beautiful by them.

The thing that drove me crazy was the slang in Ruby’s sections, especially the phrase super-coolio. The frequency with which it was interspersed in the text felt unnatural and the term seemed outdated. Maybe kids do still use that word, but I did find coolio on a recent list of 18 Slang Words That Will Make You Sound Like an Old Fart. Awesome sauce was the second most annoying term used. “Even though I can’t hear the screechy sound, I get the general uggghness. But the satellite is OMG in a coolio, not screechy way…” To be fair, Ruby doesn’t always express her thoughts like this but it is a distinct part of her voice.

I enjoyed the conclusion and I loved Ruby’s journey over the course of the novel. In Quality of Silence, the characters discover the power of words and how a voice can come in many different forms. Ruby’s parent’s professions that deal with the natural world play a part in showing the smallness of humans in relation to the universe and the tricks that time plays on us. This book fostered a greater interest in Deaf culture, Alaska, Inupiaq culture, fracking and ice road trucking. I spent a long time on YouTube watching various ice road trucking shows. TERRIFYING! Recommended to anyone looking for some fun escapism and who wants to do a little bit of traveling to the Arctic Circle from the comfort of home.

Sometimes I need a sweet little romantic comedy in my life! An adorable and heartwarming story about chance, choices, and fate.

It’s sort of absurd, isn’t it? How we grab on to facts and consequences looking to blame or exonerate ourselves? … Nine billion choices I’ve made over the course of my life could have changed where I am right now and where I’m headed. There’s no sense focusing on just one. Unless you want to punish yourself.

Twenty-nine-year-old Hannah has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life. When she moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles, she has an opportunity to reunite with her high school sweetheart Ethan. After meeting up at a bar, he asks her to go home with him and the plot splits into two different directions; in one life she says yes and in the other life she says no.

We can’t say what we would do in other circumstances. We can only know what we will do with the ones we face.

Audiobooks usually take me a little longer to settle into than print books, but this one won me over immediately. Julia Whelan has an easy, conversational tone. I would probably listen to any of the books she reads, solely because she is reading them! It was not confusing to keep up with two timelines, even via audio. A traumatic event that happens in one of the lives made it easy to stay on track. I didn’t think the story was too repetitive. It was interesting to see how analogous events and attitudes manifested in each timeline. For instance, in one timeline Hannah states she could not handle a certain event but in the other timeline she is clearly able to handle it. The only part that was a direct repeat, with slight variations, was the final section.

For some reason, I think I’ll feel better if things are meant to be. It gets me off the hook, doesn’t it? If things are meant to be, it means I don’t have to worry so much about consequences and mistakes. I can take my hands off the wheel. Believing in fate is like living on cruise control.

Hannah reminded me so much of my little sister: the traveling, the anxieties, and the crazy indecisiveness. It is probably why I liked her so much! I also loved Hannah’s best friend Gabby. When Hannah is getting settled in LA, she stays with Gabby. My favorite part of the book was Hannah and Gabby’s friendship! They are officially on my “Favorite Fictional Friendships” list, along with Leslie Knope & Ann Perkins and Meredith Gray & Christina Yang. They had such an easy rapport! I could relate to Gabby’s habit of injecting political correctness into routine conversation. I start to feel that pull when I feel like I am trapped in an echo chamber! (Texas ;D) I loved how Gabby’s family became a second family to Hannah. They were so supportive and loving towards her!

I was initially worried that Gabby would be relegated to the role of supportive best friend, but she has her own problems that she needs help with. One thing I really liked about the characters was that even when they did something impulsive or felt irrational, they were mature enough to reflect on their actions, make connections, and realize when they were wrong. Gabby’s problems help Hannah realize how her own actions have affected people.
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It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences. We have to face those consequences head-on, for better or worse. We don’t get to erase them just by saying we didn’t mean to. Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I’m starting to think that when we don’t own them, we don’t own ourselves.

The only things that got annoying were the two things everyone thinks of when they think of Hannah: cinnamon rolls and her hair in a high bun. Those quirks quickly went from cute to mildly irritating. It got to the point where I started picturing the Samuel L. Jackson meme in my head during each mention! I don’t think it is possible to do an exhaustive search on Google Books, but on the pages available I counted 45 mentions of the word “cinnamon” and 19 mentions of “bun.”

“That’s your problem. You’re trying too hard to find the perfect answer when an answer will do … You don’t need to find the perfect thing all the time. Just find one that works and go with it.”[Henry]

In Maybe in Another Life, a good life isn’t dependent on one right decision. There is more than one path to a happy and fulfilling life. I really enjoyed this audiobook and I am seriously considering buying a print copy, so I can force my sister to read it. The library’s waiting list is far too long and I need her to read it now!

I wake up most mornings feeling refreshed and well rested, with an excitement about the day. And as long as you can say that, I think you’re doing OK.

I’ve been listening to Aziz Ansari’s book Modern Romance which has been an unexpected complement with this one, along the lines of infinite choices and “you don’t need THE answer, you just need AN answer.” Also, Kindle version of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s After I Do is available for $1.99 during the month of April 2016!

Melodramatic at parts, but it has a lot of heart. It is a story about a family working through grief, centered around a mystery. I had a hard time putting it down!

Natalie Richardson passed away after a year-long battle with cancer and her husband Luke is now faced with the daunting task of raising their three children alone while they all deal with immense grief. When Luke returns home from her funeral, there is a letter on the floor…from Natalie! It was written on the first day of her cancer treatment. The letters keep coming throughout the year and become a great source of comfort for Luke. But as time goes on, the contents of the letters and the mystery of who is sending them make Luke question the entire life he and Natalie built together.

It always amazed him how something that is broken on the inside can look so perfect on the outside..

I chose this book from the ‘Read Now’ section at NetGalley. When I was in high school, one of my parents had cancer. (They are okay now!) Years later, I discovered a set of letters that had been written during their illness and were addressed to me and my three siblings. I did not read them because it felt too intrusive. They would have been too difficult to read even if I were feeling especially nosy! That experience made me interested in the concept behind this book.

First sentence: It was a beautiful funeral. How could it not be? Natalie planned the whole thing, and she always had a knack for entertaining.

This book had me from the opening line! I adored the Richardson family and they were written so authentically. Luke’s grief felt real. He struggles with the bitterness of losing his soulmate so young and he doesn’t know how he will ever move forward. He doesn’t believe in an afterlife and that makes for some interesting conversations because he is unable to provide the kind of comfort that he knows everyone around him needs. Natalie’s letters to Luke are so heartbreaking, especially the ones dealing with her hopes and fears after her diagnosis. Even though we only get to know Natalie through her letters and those she left behind, I got a full sense of her as a person.

The story did go from a standard grief story to full out DRAMA in the last 15%. Everyone had a dramatic problem that was revealed in a very dramatic way. This is not a complaint! It was all very juicy and I couldn’t stop turning the pages. The part of me that loved soap operas and Lifetime movies couldn’t get enough of it!

Part of the heaviness holding him down came from all the reminders of Natalie. Yet that ache wasn’t as profound as he’d feared it would be, almost as though he was adjusting to the pain, like when your eyes adapt in a darkened room. Underneath this understandable sadness was a simmering anger.

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I do have a personal bias against stories where the dead spouse’s best friend and widower develop feelings for each other and/or where the dead spouse orchestrates their partner’s romantic future. It creeps me out and I probably wouldn’t have picked this book if that had been mentioned in the summary! I was far more interested in the mystery behind the letters than the growing romantic tension between Luke and Natalie’s best friend Annie, no matter how much the children viewed her as a second mom. (#TeamFelicity! 😉 ). A relationship between them felt weird, especially with how codependent they were with dead Natalie. [spoiler] (“I really don’t think you’re ready for something outside of Natalie’s shadow. For now, that’s Annie.”) However, I was happy with how that story thread was tied up, especially considering Annie’s circumstances. [/spoiler]

It was like his world was swirling around one spot lately, and he wasn’t sure if it was the gentle tug of gravity or the dangerous currents of a whirlpool. The only thing he was sure of was who was at the center of that spiral..

I feel like a terrible person saying this, even about a fictional character, but I wasn’t a huge fan of Natalie. She is Type A to an extreme! My opinion of her started to turn during the incident at the college. The women’s treatment of Natalie was absolutely despicable, but Natalie’s controlling and moralistic behavior that preceded the incident made me view her differently. Suddenly, her hold over all the adults in the story seemed a tad over-the-top and a bit crazy. Doling out suspense to her mourning husband via strategically scheduled letters seemed unnecessarily cruel.

This is a little nit-picky, but I get distracted by overly specific outfit descriptions. (“dressed up in a black pantsuit with a dark-blue silk blouse that matched the water in Lake Michigan.) This story isn’t written in first-person but it is very much from Luke’s perspective and I didn’t believe those details would be important to him. The outfit descriptions were especially noticeable when Annie or Jessie, the nanny hand-picked by Natalie, entered a scene. I did think it was adorable when Jessie’s love of Broadway was revealed in ways other than clothing choice, such as singing with the middle Richardson child while doing chores.

Then Luke found himself saying the sentence he’d heard more times than he could count. Perhaps the least helpful sentence he’d ever heard. “If there is anything I can do to help, please, let me know.” When Natalie’s school acquaintances or the administrative assistant at work said those words, they always sounded empty, like a halfhearted attempt to care. Now he knew—it’s what you say when there’s nothing you can do to help besides want to.

This book was just the kind of juicy page-turner I needed at the time. I raced through this book, so I really enjoyed Bleeker’s storytelling ability! I especially enjoyed the parts dealing with grief, the cancer diagnosis and Natalie’s secret. If you liked A Small Indiscretion or The Day We Met, you will probably like this book. The stories are different, but they all have a similar ‘feel.’

“It’s the end that marks a beginning, not the first day.”

4.5 Stars. 1958, Greenwich Village: Three young people struggle to make it in the publishing industry while also wrestling with identity issues. Suzanne Rindell deftly juggles a wide range of issues: class, sexuality, racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. I felt completely immersed in the setting. This book gave me so many emotions and I had a bit of a book hangover after finishing it!

“True bravery is rare.”

James Magnuson says that this book “does for publishing what Mad Men did for advertising.” That statement made me want to read this book and I was not disappointed! Three-Martini Lunch definitely appealed to the same part of my heart that is captivated by Mad Men. It has a similar atmosphere and the same deliberate pace. If you find Mad Men slowly-paced, you might find this book slow to start. For me, the time spent setting the scene made the experience more immersive. It felt a bit like time traveling! Rindell excels at giving the reader a sense of time and place. One of my favorite scenes regarding setting is in Chapter 40 when a character travels to San Francisco and describes it in contrast to New York City: “Manhattan is concrete and ambition, steam rising from a manhole in winter, a hot blast from a subway grate in summer. Its inner workings grind away at all hours, purring in the name of commerce.”

It’s a myth that people who live in cities are naturally more open-minded, more accepting and tolerant of difference. The truth is, whatever people are, be it saints or bigots, they simply are these things, and the city–by smashing all those different kinds of people up against one another–just makes it all that much more pronounced.

The title refers to the leisurely lunches that were popular with business executives in the 50s and 60s. (“two martinis, a little business, and a third to seal the deal.”) It is 500 pages, but it is a quick read. The first half sets the stage. In the second half the plot shifts to full speed, especially the last 150 pages. I was torn between wanting to rush through pages to find out what happened and wanting to put the book down because I was dreading what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion! When Cliff and Miles discuss Miles’s writing in Chapter 2, a sense of dread developed that lasted throughout the entire novel. I also felt really unsettled with Eden’s relationship with her manipulative “mentor.”

“We will always find one another, because-like all animals prowling this earth-we cannot bear to believe we are the only ones of our kind.”
[…]
“I say this to you: Choose it, boy! Choose it before it chooses you. Because it will. You think there’s a way it won’t, that somehow there’s a way to live your life so you won’t ever catch its eye, but it will and you can’t. So choose. Choose while you’re young and you can believe in someone and can make it last a little while. That little while is the only eternity any of us mortals ever get to have. Don’t let fate do the choosing for you; don’t wait until you’re old and desperate-and wretched, as my father declared, for he wasn’t wrong-and you’re left to fumble in terrible places and it’s only your body . . . yes, only your body trying to prove to the soul that it’s not alone, and failing time and time again.”

The story alternates between three characters who hope to be successful in the publishing industry. The three characters cross paths in Greenwich Village, a place where being an artist comes before everything else. “Everybody felt like they were on the outside looking in all the time when really it was just that the hipster scene tended to turn everything inside out and the whole idea was that we were all outsiders together “

• Cliff Nelson has a difficult relationship with his father, a respected and well-known book editor. He is desperate for his father’s approval. Cliff is mediocre in every way, but he has big dreams of becoming a writer. Unfortunately, he is more interested in the potential of fame and accolades than writing itself. “I got so caught up in my head writing imaginary drafts of the good reviews I was bound to receive, it made it difficult to write the actual novel.” [spoiler]There is a great scene that really sums up Cliff, where he is boxing while staring at himself in the mirror and he still comes out on top![/spoiler]
• Eden Katz is a Jewish woman from the Midwest who dreams of being an editor one day, which she quickly discovers will be an uphill battle. Eden has to figure out what parts of herself she is willing to give up if she wants to succeed.

• Miles Tillman is a talented black writer from Harlem, but racism gives him less opportunity to succeed than someone like Cliff. He wants to live a life that makes his mother and his community proud, but in order to do that he has to deny a part of himself. Miles has to find a way to reconcile the vision of who he is supposed to be with the man he actually is. He ends up going on a quest to California to reconcile the image he has of his father with the man his father actually was, but it also becomes a journey of self-discovery. (I desperately wish the writing that resulted from this trip existed!)

“That’s the funny thing about doubt.” “What do you mean?” “It makes you feel rotten as hell. But if anyone bothered to think about it, it’s a symptom of love. It means it matters to you. It’s the brain questioning the wisdom of the heart. It doesn’t mean the heart doesn’t know better all along, it only means the brain doesn’t understand how.”

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“That’s the thing about you rich people,” Dolores continued. “You think you’re too good to ever play second fiddle, and you can go on a hundred years pretending that’s not the case! That’s called arrogance, and it’s like a bad tooth, only you rich folk are too hoity-toity to notice it in the mirror. At least down here when you got it, people take the trouble to knock it out of you.”

All the characters in this book are struggling with identity: who they are versus who they want to be. Both Eden and Miles speak of becoming invisible in order to survive and the fracturing of self that comes with surviving adulthood. Cliff was the least reflective character and had the least amount of growth, but truthfully there was no reason for him to mature or be introspective. Society doesn’t demand it of him. One of the themes is that people are complex, not all good or all bad. Eden and Miles are interesting characters because they aren’t saints. They experience adversity, but they also make choices that betray themselves and others with tragic results. While I’ve been hard on Cliff, once I read his family history it was no wonder that he turned out the way he did. (He still made me angry though!)

…I felt a little mournful to think of things this way. It was a little like being at someone’s funeral, and in a way I suppose I was mourning a version of myself that would never come to be.

This book made me feel so many emotions! I had a ‘buzzed’ feeling after finishing this book, almost like I had a three-martini lunch! ;D In the acknowledgments, Suzanne Rindell says this book was “born in large part from a desire to put several books in conversation with one another,” followed by a list of books: On the Road, Giovanni’s Room, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Bell Jar, etc. I love that! This book is beautifully written and expertly plotted. I highly recommend it, especially for those that are interested in the time period.

(This last quote is not a spoiler, but it is the last line. I don’t want to forget it!)

[spoiler]

Memoirs are a tricky genre. It is a little-known secret: We are never the heroes of our own stories, unless we are lying.
If we choose to count ourselves among the brave, we write ourselves as the villains we are, hoping for redemption.

[/spoiler]

I won this uncorrected proof from the publisher via a Goodreads giveaway.