Rape A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates

ISBN:    0786712945

Grade:   A+

Don't let the title freak you out and think this is a book for pervs.  Only JCO could get away with titling a book Rape A Love Story.  This is one of the best efforts from JCO that I have read full of damaged characters.  Some of the best JCO are books and short stories about truly damaged and imperfect characters, likable or not.  We Were the Mulvaneys and Missing Mom are two others that have been A+ reads with characters not only damaged, but dealt a crappy hand of life.  While I am an evangelist for JCO, there are enough people who think her writing atrocious in its peculiarity.  Her writing style is definitely unique, short choppy sentences are common as are long descriptive sentences.  In this novella, short and choppy sentences are the norm and they work perfectly with the story.

Not a particularly uplifting book, this is the story of a brutal gang rape and its after effects.  Teena Maguire and her 12 year old daughter Bethie are walking home from a 4th of July party when Teena decides to take a more scenic route home.  Teena and her daughter are viciously attacked by a pack of methed up low life hoodlums in the park mere minutes from their home.  Teena is beaten and raped repeatedly and left near death in a boathouse while her daughter, also beaten, hides for her life and listens to the sounds of her mother's sexual assault.  After Bethie thinks that the attackers have left, she crawls out of her hiding spot and stumbles around outside until she finds a police officer to tell him to please help her mom.

We get to read about Teena's long painful recovery and the legal process surrounding the sexual assault.  We get to know her daughter see her strength in a situation that would have most people pulling the blankets over their heads and checking out.  We also get to know the police officer who Bethie flagged down the night of the attack, who goes on to be an unsung hero of the story.

I won't say too much more other than the title will make complete sense by the end of the book.  If you're not a JCO fan after reading this, we are on totally different wavelengths.  This novella is 150 pages of near literary perfection that no other author is capable of writing.    

Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jen Lancaster

ISBN:   9780451221254

Grade:   A+

After reading quite a few stinkers, I decided to go to my happy place and read another Jen Lancaster book.  High fiction this is not, but snorts of laughter should be aplenty here.  

So after reading this I have decided one thing must be true...Jen Lancaster and I are sisters by another mister, me being her suburbanite little sis.  We both drop f-bombs frequently (as anyone who has ever rode in my car can confirm) and have a passion for our pit bulls, as well as judging those around us (neighbors especially), not to mention being booze hounds.  If I weren't so lazy, I'd add footnotes here as so many of my could benefit from footnotes (mainly to thoroughly express sarcasm).     


Bright Lights Big Ass had me laughing and snorting out loud quite frequently and almost peeing my pants at two key points.  First episode of hysterical laughter was the gynecologist appointment.  Let it be said that these appointments are not pleasant, what with having cold thing put in places where cold things do not belong.  Then there are the personal (read intimate) questions pertaining to ones sex life where I have to restrain myself from saying 'that is so not any of your business doc'.  Comments by nurses regarding weight fluctuations are also not welcome, in fact I think it's a first class ticket to hell anytime someone without a fancy expensive medical degree makes comments about how much weight one has gained.  Lastly, there are the dreaded paper gowns which are so not fat girl friendly.  These paper gowns like to explode at the slightest twitch of movement which leaves one feeling like a beached whale...a nekkid beached whale.  Jen Lancaster had the idea to staple the useless paper gown back together which I can only assume that resembled something from Frankenstein's lab.  That idea had never crossed my mind at any appointment, but I always carry a backup hoodie to cover up any exposed lady parts.  If reading the chapter containing the gyno appointment does not have you chortling, I don't know what's wrong with you.


Second near pants peeing bout of laughter came at the expense of Mama Lancaster further proving that going home reminds one of just how dysfunctional the family unit is.  This event happened during a Christmas visit home and Mama Lancaster asking what is a reach around!  Needless to say that witnesses to the question left the room crying with laughter.  If my mom ever asked what a reach around was or anything else that could be found on urbandictionary.com, I would pee my pants from laughing.  Oh and Mama Lancaster did not just ask once for someone to explain the term to her.  So fucking funny (I really tried not to use an f-bomb here but nothing else fit)!

What pisses me off is that Jen Lancaster was at Borders in Oak Park earlier this month.  Had I not been struck down with a kidney stone (yes I'm still pissed that I got one) I so would have gone decked out in a cute plaid scarf and J'adore perfume, and my 'punish the deed not the breed' button to show my bully pride.  

If you're reading this thinking that there are only 2 funny parts in the book, how wrong you be.  Nearly every page had me giggling.  I also learned a few new words to work into my daily vocabulary...philistine and troglodyte (truly fantastic words).

So Jen Lancaster if you read this, let's do drinks...pink ones with cute umbrellas.  We could be besties.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Grade: F

I won't waste your time with a full review of this book.  It is because of this book that I am starting a new rule with all books.  If after 3 chapters your book does not hold my interest, I will not finish it.  Life is too short to spend reading bad books. 

My main issue with this book was that the idea has been done before.  A mother is sick with cancer and her adult children come home to take care of said sick mother.  Throw in sick mom's husband's obsession with all things Shakespeare and that about sums the book up.  The subject matter didn't bother me as I absolutely loved Anna Quindlen's One True Thing.  My issue with this book is that it just bored the pants off me.

Moral of the story kiddos...life is too short to spend reading lousy books.

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

ISBN:

Grade:  A

Moonlight Mile is yet another fine effort by Dennis Lehane, another Patrick and Angie story and an excellent follow up to Gone Baby Gone.

Let's start off with the fact that Dennis Lehane holds nothing back in this book.  The highlights:

- lots of f bombs and I do mean lots
- disses of Paris Hilton and Lil Wayne (about time these fools were called out on their nonsense)
- a mention of carrying a gun that is as appealing as kale
- Russian mobsters who feel so real you can hear them in your head (think Nikolai from Six Feet Under)
- a jab at Kindles

The story starts with Amanda McCready going missing again.  How can a girl who went missing as a toddler go missing again as a 16 year old.  Easy when one draws double assholes in the parenting department as Lehane eloquently summed up Amanda's misfortune.  Having a mother like Helene is barely a step above being a feral child.  Add in Helene's skeevy boyfriend Kenny and it's a recipe for disaster.  Amanda appears to have turned out okay considering her crappy start to life.  She's attending a private school and getting excellent grades and will head to an Ivy league school.  What Amanda doesn't have are friends, except for a girl named Sophie who turns out to be a little screwed up too.

So Patrick is on the hunt for Amanda and Sophie which like any reader familiar with Lehane would expect, turns out like a three ring circus.  There are run ins with some nasty yet humorous Russian mobsters that shave years off Patrick's life from stress alone, and a surprising connection between the Russian Mob and Amanda.  I don't want to say too much more for fear of spoiling the book for you all.  I will say that the Patrick and Angie series seems to be wrapped up, which is a bit disappointing but at the same time I really have to wonder if it really is the end.  We learn that Patrick and Angie have a little girl named Gabby and the family dynamic is truly charming.

What Lehane does masterfully is write the best books in the crime thriller genre.  It should really be called the Dennis Lehane genre as no other author comes close to his talents.  The characters feel real even though most of us don't have life experiences like any of the characters.  The dialog is excellent and you can almost hear the characters speaking in your head.  There is humor, violence, suspense and more in a gripping page turner.  This is a book that you'll lose track of time reading, it's that engrossing.   And it's definitely one that should be made into a movie. 

If you're a fan of Lehane's previous books, you'll love this.  If you are just now meeting Patrick and Angie, Moonlight Mile can stand on its own without relying on Gone Baby Gone.  If you've never read anything by Lehane before and just know him for the Mystic River and Shutter Island movies, give this book a try.  If anyone can read this and not enjoy it, I probably don't want to know what books are on your bookshelves.  So give Moonlight Mile a try...try it you'll like it as the commercial says.  It won't require a big chunk of your time and you'll be a Lehane fan afterward.

The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens

ISBN:   

Grade:  B-

The Emerald Atlas is a fun YA fantasy book, the first in a trilogy written by a guy with ties to the Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls tv shows.  Don't judge the book based on those tv shows as they have no commonalities.

The Emerald Atlas is the story of 3 orphans Kate, Michael and Emma who are bounced from one orphanage to another after their parents mysteriously left when they were little.  The 3 siblings are passed over time and time again because not many people want to adopt 3 kids at once and the youngest Emma is a bit difficult.  The last orphanage they are sent to is run by a wizard named Dr Pym and they are the only 3 children there.  The orphanage is in a dark dreary town called Cambridge Falls that was once flourishing with life and children.  Kate, Michael and Emma quickly discover that all is not as it seems at the orphanage, quickly discovering hidden passageways and a mysterious study where they find a most interesting book.  The kids stumble upon a book with blank pages that allows them to travel back and forth through time when a picture is placed in the pages.  They learn that an evil countess is holding the children of Cambridge Falls hostage while forcing their parents to dig for the book the kids discovered.  The kids are the chosen ones that have the power to right the wrongs of the evil countess and return the town to its previous flourish.  What follows is a fun story with all kinds of interesting characters including dwarfs and dementor-like beings that will have you laughing quite frequently.

Overall, I liked the book.  It wasn't like Harry Potter where I was instantly hooked, but still a worthy read.  Part of Harry Potter's charm was that it was told in a British voice, so I can't fault John Stephens for that.  My main dislikes were the sibling banter which at times grated on my last nerve and made me thank my lucky stars that I don't have a teenager at home to deal with.  That and at times I think the plot could have been tighter, pages here and there omitted.  Still worth checking out, and I will read books 2 and 3 in the series. 

Update

Fear not my minions, I am back and reading furiously.  Where was I you ask, well everything started over a week ago when I wound up in the ER in excruciating pain that turned out to be a kidney stone the size of a pea.  Sounds like fun doesn't it? 

The pain came out of nowhere, I was sitting at the computer checking emails and was blindsided with pain in my back and lower right abdomen.  It felt like someone had just stabbed me.  So I laid down on the couch and told Mark that I was in agony and called my mom.  My first instinct was appendicitis, which in hindsight I wish it was that way it could have been removed and the pain would have stopped in a more reasonable amount of time.  So after consulting with Dr Mom, we packed up and went to the ER since the pain was showing no signs of letting up, and I'm pretty tough when it comes to pain.  The ER was a pain in the ass.  They took my vitals after about an hour and a half which was rocket speed compared with the rest.  After the vitals, they stuck me in the world's most uncomfortable wheelchair for the wait of a lifetime for a bed.  Whoever does ER triage needs to be slapped in the back of the head.  Making someone wait with excruciating abdominal pain that could be appendicitis while little Tommy and Billy get stitched up and casted is nonsense.  Those kids were not bleeding profusely nor had bones sticking out of any skin, they could have waited.

I think it took something like 4 or 5 hours to get a bed.  So in comes doc who asks about the symptoms and poke around my belly saying that the pain must not be too bad since he was poking pretty hard.  Um, jerk store my pain was way deeper than your hands could ever palpate.  I told you that, you didn't listen.  After a pelvic exam, an ultrasound was ordered and so was a CT scan.  The CT scan, what fun that was having contrast shoved up my arse that made me puke my brains out an hour later.  Ultrasound showed nothing, CT scan showed a medium sized kidney stone.  The kidney stone could pass on its own, or it could need to be busted up and passed, so the waiting game starts.

Now ER docs are not very well versed in kidney stones, so they shoo you out of there with some expensive name brand scripts and tell you to call a urologist.  Now let's take into account what time of year this is, approaching Turkey day.  Apparently to get an appointment with a urologist within a reasonable amount of time requires either a secret handshake or password.  No one at any urologist's office cares that pain is a 27 on a 1 - 10 scale.  So I was stuck at home in agony, throwing up every half hour, no matter that stomach contents had long since been emptied.  Add in abdominal spasms all over my right side, made getting any rest or any liquids impossible.  The first three days home were spent throwing up and sleeping in 2 hour spurts.  Now mind you, my Mark had to go back to work, so I was left to fend for myself, easier said than done.  So after a few more days I got fed up with being left on my own and packed up to Hospital Mom.

Hospital Mom was a lot better than having a lab/pit mix as a nurse while my husband couldn't be bothered to check in on me.  So after the constant vomiting stopped and I could graduate to Gatorade and toast, the abdominal spasms tried their best to kill me.  ER doc gave me a script for a fistful of pills naively assuming that a urologist would see me in a matter of days.  Thank god I had an emergency stash of pain pills and muscle relaxers that could take down an elephant, but barely did anything for the spasms and agonizing pain.  Happy Turkey day...not!

Let's not forget the pee screen that I was supposed to use.  Maybe a urologist has better pee screens, but since those appointments take weeks to get, I had to attempt to use what they gave me in the ER which was next to impossible.  When your electrolytes are way off and your entire body is seriously malfunctioning where you can barely walk without passing out, peeing into a little screen was no easy task.  Plus everyone told me that passing this stone would be torture.  So I figured I'd know if I passed it or not.

Well over a week later and the pain has simmered to a tolerable level and the spasms have stopped.  I have no clue where this stone is, I don't think I passed it but I don't have a clue in hell.  Hopefully next week's urologist can tell me more and explain why I got this damn stone.

I rarely eat fast food, never drink sugary pop, drink close to a gallon of water a day and have a diet that's not loaded with calcium.  Why I got a kidney stone is beyond me.  Hopefully this is the one and only time I'll have to suffer with this and I'm crossing my fingers that the urologist will have some answers.  

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard

ISBN:  9780061996054

Grade:  A+

Eternal thank yous to the good people at HarperCollins and Ecco Books!  Thank you a million times for sharing Hannah Pittard with us and introducing us to this gem of a novel.  This is my honest opinion, enthusiasm like this cannot be faked.

So after finishing The Fates Will Find Their Way, I have realized that this is likely to be the best book of 2011 and should be a huge hit.  The book cover will catch your attention with its colorful nature and once inside the pages you will not be disappointed.  This is a book that can be finished in one sitting, but I chose to savor each page not wanting this story to end.  The last 20 pages had me holding my breath at times.

So what is the book about?  It's a story about a girl named Nora who at 16 goes missing on Halloween.  It is not just a story about a missing girl, but a story of a missing girl and the impact on the community.  The story is told from a very unique point of view, first person plural from a local group of boys Nora attended school with.  The narrator is never named and never needs to be, which is much of the charm of this book.  The boys tell the story of Nora and their fantasies of her.  What happened to Nora is never fully defined, and that works like perfection.  The reader is allowed to imagine what happened to Nora.  Did she voluntarily get into someone's car and go to the airport?  Was she abducted and killed?  Did she escape from her abductor and die alone in the cold woods?  Was she pregnant and fled to start a new life in Arizona?  Did she live happily ever after?  What happened to Nora is unique to each an every one of us readers, and might be different each time the book is read and re-read.  What also needs to be mentioned is that Pittard writes from the point of view of adolescent boys effortlessly.  Some authors struggle with writing from the perspective of the opposite gender.  Hannah Pittard writes so well that at no point does the reader ever think that teen boys would have done something differently.  

Equally important to the story is Nora's sister Sissy.  Sissy was cared for by the boys and even loved by one in particular.  She was lusted after however inappropriate it may be to lust for the sister of a missing girl.  These feelings of desire ultimately led to Sissy going away to school and not returning for quite some time.

Another reason why this book gets such an enthusiastic response from me is that there is no hook to reel you in on the first page.  The whole book is the hook, compelling the reader to keep on going.  There are no lulls in the story and at no time could I predict what was going to happen in the next chapter.  All true signs of a great novel.

The characters were so well written that I could really picture them in my mind, quirks and all.  No two characters were alike.  Each character was artfully placed into the story, not one feeling unnecessary.  There was not one awkward word or any word that did not belong.  The story is also realistic and down to earth, although no one could ever wish for this to happen to their own community.  The dynamics between the boys felt like what real 16 year old guys behaved like, different maturity levels but all banded together in a brotherhood of sorts.    

We got to imagine what Nora would or could have been, and we also got to see the evolution of a group of high school boys as they grew into adults never quite forgetting about Nora.  We also got a look inside the inner workings of the families from a Russian vixen mom, a suicidal mom, and equally dysfunctional dads.

Suffice it to say, anyone will be a Hannah Pittard believer after reading this book.  This book will also renew anyone's faith in great literature.  All of us at some point have been let down and disappointed by a book or books.  The Fates Will Find Their Way soothes that, it soothes the soul.  This book can easily stand next to a Joyce Carol Oates with utmost confidence.  

Right now I just can't shut up about this book.  I talk about it to everyone I know, and will be discussing it with the book club this month.  If there is a Hannah Pittard bandwagon or a cheerleader squad, I'm all aboard.  Everyone should read this superb novel as it is perfection.