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152. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Sue Breen

Author:   Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance, World War II

277 pages, published July 29, 2008

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Written as a series of letters, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society tells two stories.  The first takes place in 1946 Britain during the immediate aftermath of World War II.  London is emerging from the shadow of war and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. She finds it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.  As Juliet delves into her new subject, the second story of life on the Island of Guernsey, the only part of the UK occupied by the Germans during the war, takes shape and fascinates a curious Juliet.  Juliet is drawn into the eccentric world of this man and his friends and learns about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which originated as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.  Juliet begins a correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she travels to Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

 

Quotes

“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive – all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”

 

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”

 

“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”

 

“I don’t want to be married just to be married. I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.”

 

“Life goes on.” What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on.”

 

“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”

 

“I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.”

“Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person’s name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and “fruitfulness” is drawn in.”

 

“All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged — after all, what’s good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it’s a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot. ”

 

“Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I’ll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He’d have to–you’d not grant anyone else something you can’t have for yourself–no love, no kindness, no respect!”

 

“If there is Predestination, then God is the devil.”

 

My Take

I really loved listening to the audio version of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a delightful book rich with colorful characters, especially protagonist Juliet Ashton.  The authors draw you into Juliet’s world and through her letters we can vicariously experience life on the island of Guernsey during and after World War II and life in post war London.  Juliet is intelligent, dedicated, witty, funny, but most importantly, she is kind hearted.  All of her traits permeate this book, making you wish that she was a real person you could know and befriend.  I recently learned that they are making a movie of this book starring Lily James (who was wonderful as both Cousin Rose on Downton Abbey and as Cinderella in the Disney live action movie version).  I think it was an excellent casting choice and I look forward to seeing the film version of one of my favorite books of the year.

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140. Eleanor & Park

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Rainbow Rowell

Genre:  Fiction, Young Adult, Romance

328 pages, published February 26, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Eleanor & Park tells the story of two misfits who share an extraordinary love.  Eleanor, an overweight sixteen year old with wild red hair, is trapped in a dysfunctional family and is barely hanging on when she meets Park.  Park, who is half Asian and much cooler than Eleanor, is her soul mate.  Over the course of one school year, the unlikely couple discover that they share an amazing bond, but that the bond will be tested.  They know that while a first love almost never lasts, they need to try to defy the odds.

 

Quotes

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

 

“I don’t like you, Park,” she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. “I…” – her voice nearly disappeared – “think I live for you.”

He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into his pillow.

“I don’t think I even breathe when we’re not together,” she whispered. “Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it’s been like sixty hours since I’ve taken a breath. That’s probably why I’m so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we’re apart is think about you, and all I do when we’re together is panic. Because every second feels so important. And because I’m so out of control, I can’t help myself. I’m not even mine anymore, I’m yours, and what if you decide that you don’t want me? How could you want me like I want you?”

He was quiet. He wanted everything she’d just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with ‘I want you’ in his ears.”

 

“Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”

 

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,’ he said, ‘and then take it back.’

‘I can,’ she said. ‘Life’s a bastard.”

 

“If you can’t save your own life, is it even worth saving?”

 

“I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake”

 

“The me that’s me right now is yours. Always.”

 

“He tried to remember how this happened—how she went from someone he’d never met to the only one who mattered.”

 

“His parents never talked about how they met, but when Park was younger, he used to try to imagine it.  He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him–they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn’t have to do that.”

 

My Take

While I mostly enjoyed reading Eleanor & Park, I think I’m a little too old to fully appreciate this book.  As a piece of young adult fiction, teenagers are the target audience.  As a 51 year old woman, I found it a bit too dramatic in its depiction of a first love.  However, it did bring back memories of what it felt like when nothing else in the world matters except the object of your affection.  I’m glad that I felt that way when I was younger, but I’m also glad that I don’t feel that way now that I’m older.

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122. The Chemist

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   

Author:   Stephanie Meyer

Genre:  Fiction, Romance, Thriller

512 pages, published November 8, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame is an action/adventure tale that tells the story of Alex, an ex CIA agent and torturer specializing in chemical cocktails to make her subjects talk, who is on the run from her former employers who must take one more case to clear her name and save her life.  Along the way, Alex hooks up with Daniel, a loveable school teacher, and his brother Kevin, a former Black Ops agent.  Intrigue and a love story ensue.  

 

Quotes

“I’ve never been drawn to someone the way I am to you, and I have been from the very first moment I met you. It’s like the difference between…between reading about gravity and then falling for the first time.”

 

“She earched for something to say, something that would make the world a little less dark and scary for him.  “Pop-Tart?” she offered.”

 

“Sometimes you cling to a mistake simply because it took so long to make.”

My Take

The Chemist is a popcorn thriller/action book. Not great literature, but readable enough (although the torture scenes are too drawn out and graphic for my taste).  The Twilight series was such a page-turning guilty pleasure for me that I felt compelled to check out Meyer’s other two books:  The Host and The Chemist.  Unfortunately, The Chemist is the weakest link.  Clocking in at 512 pages, your time is better spent elsewhere.

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111. Beautiful Ruins

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Julie Horowitz

Author:   Jess Walter

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Foreign

337 pages, published June 12, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The story begins in 1962 when Pasquale, an Italian man in his early twenties who runs his family’s Inn with an Adequate View in Vergogna, meets Dee Moray on a rocky patch overlooking the Italian coastline.   Pasquale becomes enchanted with Moray, an American starlet, who has abandoned her small part in Cleopatra which is shooting in Italy, because she believes that she is dying.  The story, which goes back and forth in time, then weaves in many other interesting characters.  Michael Deane, an old time, has-been Hollywood Producer, described as a lacquered elf as the result of too much plastic surgery, who is connected to Moray and Pasquale and is desperate for a comeback hit.  Claire, Deane’s earnest assistant, who strives to make art and is consistently disillusioned with the drek that Hollywood pumps out.  Shane, who pitches and ill-fated movie idea based on the Donner party to Claire and Deane.  Pat, Moray’s illegitimate son who chases the dream of music stardom down a rabbit hole of self-loathing.  Alvis, an American veteran of World War II, whose time in Italy as a soldier fundamentally changed him and who cannot get past his writer’s block when he tries to convey what happened.  Even Richard Burton, who is in Italy to play Marc Antony, has a significant role.  All of these characters and more interact over fifty years to create a compelling, heartfelt, moving and often hilarious story about human longings and our connections to each other.

 

Quotes

“Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same. Pasquo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.”

 

“Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life–not so much with the woman, whom he didn’t even know, but with the moment.”

 

“His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.”

 

“All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell. But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!”

 

“He thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.”

 

“A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.”  Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.”

 

“Stories are bulls. Writers come of age full of vigor, and they feel the need to drive the old stories from the herd. One bull rules the herd awhile but then he loses his vigor and the young bulls take over.  Stories are nations, empires. They can last as long as ancient Rome or as short as the Third Reich. Story-nations rise and decline. Governments change, trends rise, and they go on conquering their neighbors.  Stories are people. I’m a story, you’re a story . . . your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we’re lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we’re less alone.”

 

“This reminded him of Alvis Bender’s contention that stories were like nations – Italy, a great epic poem, Britain, a thick novel, America, a brash motion picture in technicolor…”

 

“Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them, they lose their value, just like money. They begin to mean nothing. Use ‘beautiful’ to describe a sandwich and the word means nothing. Since the war, there is no more room for inflated language. Words and feelings are small now – clear and precise. Humble like dreams.”

 

“Weren’t movies his generation’s faith anyway- its true religion? Wasn’t the theatre our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons- but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it. That summer, the one you’ll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images…flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that become our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion?”

 

“To pitch here is to live. People pitch their kids into good schools, pitch offers on houses they can’t afford, and when they’re caught in the arms of the wrong person, pitch unlikely explanations. Hospitals pitch birthing centers, daycares pitch love, high schools pitch success . . . car dealerships pitch luxury, counselors self-esteem, masseuses happy endings, cemeteries eternal rest . . . It’s endless, the pitching—endless, exhilarating, soul-sucking, and as unrelenting as death. As ordinary as morning sprinklers.”

 

“This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.”

 

“He was part of a ruined generation of young men coddled by their parents -by their mothers especially- raised on unearned self-esteem, in a bubble of overaffection, in a sad incubator of phony achievement.”

 

“He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.”

 

“At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?”

 

“He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

 

“And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking–how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe–Pasquale Tursi said, only, “Yes.”

 

“But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.”

 

“But aren’t all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos– we know what’s out there. It’s what isn’t that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags– four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon– but true quests aren’t measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant– sail for Asia and stumble on America– and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.”

 

“Be confident and the world responds to your confidence, rewards your faith.”

 

“What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough?”

 

“This is a love story,” Michael Dean says, ”but really what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery or the chase, or the nosey female reporter who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely, the serial murder loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets, or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice-trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk. Just as the housewives live for catching glimpses of their own botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors and the rocked out dude on ‘roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on hookbook. Because this is reality, they are all in love, madly, truly, with the body-mic clipped to their back-buckle and the producer casually suggesting, “Just one more angle.”, “One more jello shot.” And the robot loves his master. Alien loves his saucer. Superman loves Lois. Lex and Lana. Luke loves Leia, til he finds out she’s his sister. And the exorcist loves the demon, even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace. As Leo loves Kate, and they both love the sinking ship. And the shark, god the shark, loves to eat. Which is what the Mafioso loves too, eating and money and Pauly and Omertà. The way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar and sometimes loves the other cowboy. As the vampire loves night and neck. And the zombie, don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool, has anyone ever been more love-sick than a zombie, that pale dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms. His very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains. This, too is a love story.”

“And even if they don’t find what they’re looking for, isn’t it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?”

My Take

I had not heard much about Beautiful Ruins or author Jess Walter prior to reading this book.  However, after seeing it on several recommended books lists, I decided to give it a try.  I’m glad I did.  Walter creates a fascinating world that oscillates between a small coastal town in Italy during the early 1960’s and modern day Hollywood.  His characters are well articulated and keep inviting you to go deeper with them as they struggle with their dreams, realities, ambitions, disappointments, and longings.  While there is meaning here, there is also great humor, especially when Walter skewers Hollywood, both modern day and yesteryear.  I was sad to finish this book, but happy that I got to spend some time in the world of Beautiful Ruins.

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93. What Alice Forgot

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Heather Bohart

Author:   Lianne Moriarty

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

476 pages, published 2009

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

As the book opens, Alice Love is twenty-nine, head over heels in love with her husband and pregnant with her first child.  When Alice is admitted to the hospital after hitting her head at the gym, she is shocked to discover that she is actually 39 years old, has three kids, is in the middle of a nasty divorce and does not seem to be the person she thought she was.  As the book unfolds, Alice must discover what happened to her and the idyllic life she thought she had.  

 

Quotes

“Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best– well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”

 

“He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light.”

 

“They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.”

 

“How strange it all was. Wouldn’t it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?”

 

“She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasn’t linked to something awful that needed forgiving.”

 

“It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn’t all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn’t worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn’t mean that it hadn’t been happy at times.”

 

“Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together, even when they were foolishly thinking they could lead separate lives. It was as simple and complicated as that.”

 

“There just wasn’t enough time in 2008. It had become a limited resource. Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. When she woke up in the morning, the day rolled out in front of her like a long hallway for her to meander down, free to linger over the best parts. Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh! When she was pulling back the blankets to hop into bed each night, it felt as if only seconds ago.”

 

“But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums.”

 

“I’d be at work where poeple respected my opinions, said Nick. And then, I’d come home and it was like I was the village idiot.”

 

“We’d traveled, we’d been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we’d slept in. We’d done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn’t want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.”

 

“I remember how it crept up so slowly on me, like that agonizingly slow old electric blanket which used to almost imperceptibly heat up my frosty sheets, second by second, until I’d think, “Hey, I haven’t shivered in a while. Actually, I’m warm. I’m blissfully warm.” That’s how it was with Ben. I moved on from “I really shouldn’t be leading this guy on when I have no interest” to “He’s not that bad-looking really” to “I sort of enjoy being with him” to “Actually, I’m crazy about him.”

 

My Take

What Alice Forgot is the third book by Liane Moriarity that I have read since starting my thousand book quest (the first two are Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret) and it does not disappoint.  Moriarity has a formula that typifies her books and it works well for her.  Her books are set in Australia with several female protagonists and one or, usually more than one, of them has a conflict to be resolved.  There is also typically some sort of twist.  By the end of the book, all has been settled and the characters are ready to move on with their newly improved lives. While What Alice Forgot hews closely to the Moriarity formula, it’s insights into long-term marriages and how we change in them does offer some novelty and interest.  Easy read.  Perfect vacation book.

 

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89. The Light Between Oceans

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   M.L. Stedman

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance

343 pages, published July 31, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

After four years on the Western Front during World War I, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on the very isolated Janus Rock where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year.  Before settling in, Tom meets the young, beautiful and bold Isabel.  They strike a correspondence that eventually leads to marriage.  Their idyllic and loving relationship begins to deteriorate after Isabel suffers two miscarriages and one stillbirth.  When a boat has washes up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby, Isabel thinks her prayers have been answered and views the baby girl as a gift from God.  Tom, who is torn by his sense of propriety and his wife’s overwhelming grief, reluctantly agrees to pretend that Isabel gave birth to this baby.  This decision sets forth a series of events which tests Tom and Isabel’s marriage, consciences and sanity.

 

Quotes

“…or I can forgive and forget…Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things…we always have a choice.”

 

“You’ve had so much strife but you’re always happy. How do you do it?” “I choose to,”

 

“Izz, I’ve learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you’ve got to give up hope of ever changing your past.”

 

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it’s done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”

 

“When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear.”

 

“It astounds him that the tiny life of the girl means more to him than all the millennia before it. He struggles to make sense of his emotions – how he can feel both tenderness and unease when she kisses him goodnight, or presents a grazed knee for him to kiss better with the magic power that only a parent has. For Isabel, too, he is torn between the desire he feels for her, the love, and the sense that he cannot breathe. The two sensations grate at one another, unresolved.”

 

“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers’ deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother’s life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.”

 

“Putting down the burden of the lie has meant giving up the freedom of the dream.”

 

“Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn’t changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.”

 

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory….Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”

 

“It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.”

 

“History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.”

 

“Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot’em both, and then it’s too late.”

 

“The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember. Children can grow up having no knowledge of the indiscretion of their father in his youth or the illegitimate sibling who lives fifty miles away and bears another man’s name. History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That’s how life goes on; protected by the silence that anaesthetises shame.”

 

“No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth…”

 

“We live with the decisions we make, Bill. That’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.”

 

My Take

The Light Between Oceans is a beautifully written book that examines the impact of a questionable, but understandable, decision made by the main characters Tom and Isabel.  When the couple, who lives in and operate a remote lighthouse, discovers a baby girl who washed up to shore in a rowboat with a dead man, it seems like an answer to their prayers, especially for Isabel who has suffered several miscarriages and a still birth.  Tom is not so sure they should keep the child, but puts aside his concerns to keep his wife from slipping into madness.  When, several years later, Tom discovers the child has a living mother who is grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and child, he is racked by guilt.  The examination of this situation and its impact on the essentially good and decent Tom and Isabel makes The Light Between Oceans a compelling read.

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73. The Husband’s Secret

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Liane Moriarty

Genre:  Fiction

396 pages, published July 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Husband’s Secret is a suspenseful novel that, as with many Liane Moriarity books, tells the intersecting stories of several Australian women.  The central character is Cecilia Fitzpatrick who, for all intents and purposes, seems to have it all.  She’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother.  Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home.  However, when rummaging through the attic she discovers a letter that is only meant to be read upon her husband’s death.  She can’t help herself and reads it and discovers her husband’s secret.  Once she does, not only Cecelia and her family but many of others in her community, experience life changing repercussions.

 

Quotes

“This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either.”

 

“Her goodness had limits. She could have easily gone her whole life without knowing those limits, but now she knew exactly where they lay.”

 

“Falling in love was easy.  Anyone could fall.  It was holding on that was tricky.”

 

“All these years there had been a Tupperware container of bad language in her head, and now she opened it and all those crisp, crunchy words were fresh and lovely, ready to be used.”

 

“None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have, and maybe should have taken.”

 

“It’s all about our egos. She felt she was on the edge of understanding something important. They could fall in love with fresh, new people, or they could have the courage and humility to tear off some essential layer of themselves and reveal to each other a whole new level of otherness, a level far beyond what sort of music they liked. It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.”

 

“Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.”

 

“Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.”

 

“The words “I´m sorry” felt like an insult. You said “I´m sorry” when you bumped against someone´s supermarket trolley. There need to be bigger words.”

 

“When you didn’t let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn’t family, of saying I don’t like you enough to let you into my kitchen.”

 

“She was a far better mother when she had an audience.”

 

“Life would go back to being unendurable, except – and this was the worst part – she would in fact endure it, it wouldn’t kill her, she’d keep on living day after day after day, an endless loop of glorious sunrises and sunsets that Janie never got to see.”

 

My Take

The Husband’s Secret is the second book by Liane Moriarity that I read this year (the first was Big Little Lies).  Moriarity has a formula to her books.  She sets up several women with intersecting lives as her characters, spends the first part of the book alluding to an event while keeping some mystery about the details of the event, and then shows how the characters lives change in reaction to the event.  It’s a formula that works pretty well.  Moriarity creates interesting and well developed characters and locations and the element of mystery keeps you turning the pages.  I recommend The Husband’s Secret.  A great read while on vacation.

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71. Big Little Lies

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   

Author:   Liane Moriarity

Genre:  Fiction

460 pages, published July 29, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book and Book

Summary 

Big Little Lies tells the story of three friends in a seaside Australian town of Pirriwee.  Madeline, a divorced and remarried mother of three, is funny, passionate, remembers everything and forgives no one.  Her ex-husband and his new zen wife Bonnie have moved into her beloved beachside community and Madeline’s daughter seems to be to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her.  Celeste is a woman of striking beauty married to Perry, a incredibly handsome and rich man who seems to the outside world to be the perfect husband and father.  However, things are not always as they appear to be.  Jane is a very young single mother who, with her son Ziggy, are recent arrivals in Pirriwee and are befriended by Madeline and Celeste.   Jane harbors a sad secret and has concerns about her son’s character when he is accused of accosting a girl in his Kindergarten class.  The stories of these three women develop and intersect in interesting ways that culminate in a potential murder at the Pirriwee Public School’s trivia night.

 

Quotes

“They say it’s good to let your grudges go, but I don’t know, I’m quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.”

 

“Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.”

 

“If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself.”

 

“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.” “But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline. “Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I was! That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”

 

“Every day I think, ‘Gosh, you look a bit tired today,’ and it’s just recently occurred to me that it’s not that I’m tired, it’s that this is the way I look now.”

 

“The only woman who deserved a philandering husband was a philandering wife.”

 

“Nothing and nobody could aggravate you the way your child could aggravate you.”

 

“Stick with the nice boys, Chloe!” said Madeline after a moment. “Like Daddy. Bad boys don’t bring you coffee in bed, I’ll tell you that for free.”

 

“every relationship had its own “love account.” Doing something kind for your partner was like a deposit. A negative comment was a withdrawal. The trick was to keep your account in credit.”

 

“This was not the career she’d dreamed of as an ambitious seventeen-year-old, but now it was hard to remember ever feeling innocent and audacious enough to dream of a certain type of life, as if you got to choose how things turned out.”

 

“It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.”

My Take

I have read Liane Moriarty’s (author of The Husband’s Secret, What Alice Forgot, and Truly, Madly, Greatly) Big Little Lies twice, the audio version last year and the book version this year when I assigned it to my book club.  As Gretchen Rubin opines in The Happiness Project (which is one of my all time favorite books):  “the best reading is re-reading.”  I’m not sure that  I gained a lot more the second time around, but I did enjoy it both times (although the narrator’s voice with her heavy Australian accent on the audio version took some getting used to).  The women protagonists of Big Little Lies draw you into their lives and it is not hard to empathize with their pain, struggles and heartbreak.  I was especially moved by Celeste, the rich and beautiful woman who seemed to have it all, but who realistically thought she might not live another year.  Big Little Lies is worth a read and I recommend it.

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53. Boomsday

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:   JL Collins

Author:   Christopher Buckley

Genre:  Fiction, Satire

336 pages, published April 2, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75.  Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them an ambitious senator seeking the presidency.  With the help of Washington’s greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called “transitioning”) all the way to the White House, over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.

 

Quotes

“My, my, my, how very different are the workings of government from what we all read about in books as children.  I wonder, do the Founders weep in heaven?”

 

“Had he merely dreamed a beautiful dream, or had a United States senator just gone on television to advocate mass suicide as a means of dealing with the deficit?”

 

“a blue blood in a red meat business”

 

“like the milk ads, only they’re drinking poison”

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51. The Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Shonda Rhimes

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Self-Improvement

336 pages, published November 10, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

On Thanksgiving Day, 2013, Shonda Rhymes, the uber-talented and successful creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, told her sister about some amazing invitations that she had received.  Her sister’s response, “Who cares?  You’re just going to say no anyway.  You never say yes to anything,” touched a nerve in Shonda and forced her to re-examine her approach to life.  She then decided to start saying yes, even when it scared her and took her far outside of her comfort zone.  The results were incredible.  She shared a box at the Kennedy Center with President Obama and the First Lady, posed for magazine covers, gave a commencement speech at her alma matter Dartmouth College, stopped everything when her children wanted to play, and most impressively, lost over 120 pounds.

 

Quotes

“Lucky implies I didn’t do anything. Lucky implies something was given to me. Lucky implies that I was handed something I did not earn, that I did not work hard for. Gentle reader, may you never be lucky. I am not lucky. You know what I am?  I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard.  Don’t call me lucky.  Call me a badass.”

 

“Losing yourself does not happen all at once.  Losing yourself happens one no at a time.”

 

“You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever.  Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.  Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever.  Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.”

 

“You know what happens when all of your dreams come true? Nothing. I realized a very simple truth: that success, fame, having all my dreams come true would not fix or improve me, it wasn’t an instant potion for personal growth.”

 

“You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real. Just . . . DO.”

 

“They tell you:  Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true.  I think that’s crap.  I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people?  Are busy doing.”

 

“There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It’s funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don’t want a baby? Don’t have one. I don’t want to get married? I won’t. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it.”

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