Hi all. Considering the week in news, it might be time for some more happy dog photos … or wait, maybe a yellow goldfinch sitting at the feeder.  This lone goldfinch (at left) with his spouse came to visit us over the weekend during a major rainstorm on Friday and Saturday where we were projected to get anywhere from 3 to 6 inches of rain. I think at least 4 inches fell and it hovered round 40 degrees, all the while others around North America were having a heat wave. It happened on the anniversary of the 2013 flood (June 20) to these parts, so that was a bit eerie.

Alas the goldfinch and his partner graced us with their continued support during the storm. I know many of you see goldfinches all the time down south, but we don’t get them here that often. Though apparently the north is the birds’ breeding grounds. So it was a treat to see the bright yellow male bird and his paler yellow spouse here. And they are back again today, enjoying some food before new travels. 

Meanwhile you might have heard that it was the 50th anniversary on Friday of the movie Jaws, which came out June 20, 1975. Oh yeah. I hadn’t turned 10 yet that year, but I recall seeing the movie (it was controversially PG at the time) … and at some point I also read the book by Peter Benchley. The movie in the theater back in 1975 was pretty terrifying, lol, and the first scene with the lady swimmer at night and the music sent me pretty low into my seat with my hands over my eyes. After all we went to the beach often growing up in Southern Cal and it sent my imagination into high drive thereafter. 

There’s so many memorable scenes and lines in the film as well as great actors with Robert Shaw as Quint, Roy Scheider as Brody, and Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper. I’ve seen it dozens of times over the decades and it still will stop me if I come upon across it on the TV today. It was a great film and it surely made a big impact on Hollywood. What do you remember about seeing it for the first time? Do you remember where you were when you saw the movie?

And now I’ll leave you with a book review of what I finished lately. 

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante / Europa / 480 pages / 2012 

My read of this modern classic was a buddy read with Tina at the blog Turn the Page, which took me from May to June to finish. It’s Book 2 of Elena Ferrante’s four-book Neapolitan series, and you might recall we read Book 1, My Brilliant Friend last year.  Of course, we were curious to continue on to see what would happen in the lives of the two close friends, Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, who grow up in a poor neighborhood of Naples, Italy, in the 1950s. 

This novel takes place in Italy over the 1960s and covers the girls years from ages 16 to 23. It’s quite an epic saga in which the girls’ friendship sees a roller coaster of ups and downs and their well-being over time seems to change hands. From Book 1 we find that Lila has taken the marriage route at age 16 (!) to Stefano, the profitable grocer who gives her a nice house and things, and invests in her family’s shoe business. But she soon comes to believe (early in Book 2) he’s deceived her into marriage — entering too into a partnership with the despised rich Solaras family — and that he’s a brute who beats her. While her status rises, Lila soon becomes very unhappy. 

“The condition of wife had enclosed her in a sort of glass container, like a sailboat sailing with sails unfurled in an inaccessible place, without the sea.”

Meanwhile her childhood friend Elena is also not in a good place as the novel begins. Elena feels waves of unhappiness that “everything is against her”: with her boyfriend Antonio, her school grades slipping, and her loss of Lila to marriage. Later though Elena begins studying after school at Lila’s house and realizes her troubles are nonsense compared to the bruises she sees on her friend. Lila buys Elena her schoolbooks and Elena invites Lila to a party at a teacher’s house, only to find herself and the experience mocked by Lila afterwards, which leads to the first separation between the two friends for a while.

But then after a miscarriage, Lila invites Elena to the beach for several weeks in the summer, where a doctor says Lila should gain strength by swimming. This seems a turning point as Lila learns to swim and they hang out more freely with Lila’s sister-in-law and two university students, who includes Nino Salvatore, the boy Elena has long had a major crush on. It’s a notable summer but ends up having repercussions for all. 

Still afterwards, Elena redirects herself back to her studies, gaining traction to graduate high school and go away to university, while Lila makes a break of sorts too after her son is born. The girls’ friendship ebbs and flows. It’s competitive at times and hurtful and sees long periods of separation, yet still they seem also to be joined at the hip … when the chips are down and out from their days growing up together in their poor neighborhood of Naples. 

Much of the story is revealed from eight notebooks Lila gives to Elena during her marriage that describes her life and observations. Elena reads them intensely, but then throws them in the Arno river. You have to shake your head at the actions and petty feelings they have about one another at times. Still Ferrante’s details and the writing (quite easy to meander) make it all quite fabulous. You want to see how it unfolds and how the girls will fare in life. It’s a coming-of-age tale that seems to know no bounds. And after 480 pages, the novel all of a sudden comes to an abrupt ending. I was not ready for it then, but there’s always Books 3 & 4 to come. I will wait to read them at a later date … as this lengthy story took a lot out of me, but still I will give it 5 stars. I enjoyed it a bit more than Book 1 since the girls are older in this and become young women with all that entails.

just fyi — I’ve tried to be discreet and not give too much away in the review but still describe enough so I can remember the book for myself years from now. At least, that’s my objective with all these reviews. 

That’s all for now. What about you have read this author — and if so, what did you think?

Hi bookworms, how’s your week been? We finally came out of the deep freeze up here, and it went from -5F to +48F in a couple days, which was a crazy change, followed by a big wind storm. It feels like Miami in comparison. We will take it. Check out this photo I took yesterday driving home from errands.

Meanwhile the month has been flying by and there was a “little” hockey game on Thursday night in Boston between the U.S. and Canada that apparently drew over 16 million viewers across both countries. We were glued to it and it was very exciting for Canada to win in overtime. The game stayed civil and seemed to mean a lot to the northern nation amid all the talk of tariffs and annexation by the current White House occupant. The two countries have been friends for over 150 years, and I know many Americans stand with Canada, which is very helpful.

Just a reminder, this week the 10-part nature documentary series The Americas will air on NBC and Peacock. Narrated by Tom Hanks — I think it should be a captivating show, spotlighting the creatures, habitats, and ecosystems found throughout North and South America. My husband and I will be checking it out. Also over the past several months we’ve been trying to catch some of the Oscar-nominated films. We only watch one show or movie per night, but we’ve added some new ones to our seen list including: 

• September 5 — 4+ stars, a pretty gripping look chronicling when ABC Sports came to cover the Israeli hostage crisis live during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Apparently this was the the first time a terrorist attack had been broadcast on live television and it was viewed by approximately 900 million.  
• A Real Pain — 3.5 stars, about two mismatched cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who take a tour of Poland to honor their late grandmother. This had some funny and poignant moments, but it seemed to be a bit undeveloped and I wanted to know more. 
• Anora — 3.7 stars, about a call girl from Brooklyn who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch and finds trouble when his parents come to annul the marriage. This is a grim, tough film! Rated R for good reason. I had no idea what I was getting into. This is harsh and hits hard but is an eye-opener. 
• Gladiator II — 3.5 stars, Beforehand I thought this sequel wasn’t going to measure up and would have too much fake CGI, but I found it entertaining and actor Paul Mescal was easy to root for as a Roman gladiator trying to put an end to two tyrannical emperors.
• Short Film Documentaries — We had never seen these before but our local theater was playing the five Oscar-nominated short films together. They were all quite strong. One is about Japanese elementary school students who create a musical performance; another follows a Parkland school mass shooting survivor; another a police incident shooting in Chicago; another follows a Texas death row inmate’s last days; and the last is about the double bassist and only woman in the New York Philharmonic in 1966.

So these movies are in addition to the ones we’ve seen listed here. 

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of books that I finished lately. 

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin / Holt / 240 pages / 2023

I want to thank Stargazer at the blog For Book People and Random People for telling me about this Vietnamese immigrant story, since I’ve been picking up various immigrant stories lately. And I couldn’t resist another. 

3.7 stars / This is about Anh (age 16) and her two younger brothers who take a perilous boat trip in 1978 as refugees out of Vietnam to Hong Kong, where they await their parents and other siblings who never arrive. The three languish in refugee camps there until eventually getting the green light for the UK, where they are put in resettlement camps for a long while until public housing later becomes available. Anh watches over her siblings, while struggling with the grief over the loss of their parents, and trying to pick up a new culture and language. As the years go by, the three begin to separate a bit. Anh works as a seamstress in a factory, Thanh tries hard in school and ends up in insurance, and Minh drops out and gets into drugs. 

I think I would’ve liked the print novel a bit better than the audiobook since the author jumps around with chapters among various perspectives and it can be a bit confusing with no labels on a few. There’s primarily Anh’s story, but also: the voice of a dead brother, news reports and letters, soldiers, survivors, and an unnamed narrator who you find out at the end is a second-generation immigrant relative who is writing about Anh and the brothers’ experiences. 

It is interestingly told and much is quite moving, though other times it felt like it was done with broad brushstrokes with Ahn and her brothers going from camp life to housing and on with their lives without enough detail or development. It seems the author is doing a lot with the various perspectives and maybe it was a bit too much (when less could’ve been a bit deeper). Still it lends a heartfelt and eye-opening look into the Vietnam boat people who dispersed to various countries in the late 1970s and the sheer odds they faced. Many overcame so much to fit in and flourish in their adopted countries. This story tells of one family’s amazing resilience. 

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware / Scout Press / 341 pages / 2016 

3.7 stars. I’m one of few who hasn’t read a Ruth Ware novel until now. I am not a big thriller reader and one reason is: they often get a bit crazy or unbelievable at some point … and this one was no exception. Still I enjoyed it at various points. The lead character journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is quite a mess when she gets onboard a glitzy one-week cruise ship the Aurora. Her place was burglarized before leaving and she had a fight with her boyfriend. Since then she hasn’t slept and drinks like a fish … in addition to taking her regular pills for anxiety and depression. 

So when she hears what she thinks is a person being thrown overboard late at night from next door in Cabin 10, no one really believes her. Since everyone is accounted for, the crew thinks she’s been hallucinating or is paranoid. But a crew member takes her around to interview staff and others. Her ex Ben Howard who’s onboard seems really suspicious – as well as some of the others aboard. But it’s takes quite a while to unravel if there’s anything amiss on the ship. 

Meanwhile it makes for a good confining setting amid an array of guests and seasickness … with Lo’s head in agony too from a nasty hangover, minimal sleep, and claustrophobia. It’s the perfect uneasy setting and Lo makes a wobbly main character. It reminded me a bit of The Girl on the Train mixed with an Agatha Christie. But towards the end the plot seems a bit of a stretch and gets a bit crazy, and I was ready, like Lo, to get ashore somehow, someway. 

Still the madness is a bit fun, and I will likely get to the sequel The Woman in Suite 11 (coming in July) and see the upcoming Netflix movie of this one with Keira Knightley as the boozy and anxious Lo Blacklock.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen any of these movies, or read these novels — and if so, what did you think? 

Hi. Was it a rough week or what? We need to pace ourselves with the crazy current honcho. Even for those avoiding the news, it’s not going to be easy with this wayward circus and trying to hold on. But I hope those in the South who got some snow enjoyed a moment of wonderment with those rare flakes. We’ve had a mild windy winter here without much snowpack so people are worried about drought. It’s supposed to be in the 50s a bit next week, which is a rare thing for this time of year. So it seems the Canadian winter here has flown south. Too bad for the skiing.

Meanwhile the nominations for the Academy Awards came out last week with the French musical Emilia Pérez getting 13 nominations, which is a record for a non-English language film, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked picking up 10 nominations each, and A Complete Unknown and Conclave with eight nominations, and Anora, a romantic-comedy drama, received six nominations. 

I was surprised but pleased to see that the sort of unknown actress Monica Barbaro who plays Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan movie received a Best Supporting Actress nomination (wow), and that the foreign film I’m Still Here, which I’m hoping to see whenever its available, received Best Actress and Best Picture nominations. We have a lot left to watch but should see some more films before the March 2 award ceremony, which apparently is still proceeding after the extensive fire damage around L.A. County. I’m still big on A Complete Unknown, which features some classic songs and was very enjoyable to watch. 

In TV series right now we’ve been watching Bad Sisters Season 2 and trying out Severance Season 1, which has a pretty kind of crazy sci-fi plot about some office workers who are being manipulated by their company like guinea pigs. Both shows (on AppleTV+) are sort of dark and satirical but a bit fun in that way. Speaking of which, one of the better series we watched last fall was Ripley (on Netflix) based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was done once as a film in 1999 so I wasn’t really expecting much, but the TV series with Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley is done really well and is creepy. It has an excellent cat-and-mouse crime plot and was shot in black-and-white on location in Italy with some wonderful shots. Thanks to Lesley at the blog Coastal Horizons who talked it up in September. It’s a bit of an intriguing watch.  

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately. 

The Leavers by Lisa Ko / Algonquin / 2017 / 352 pages

3.75 stars. This novel is still very relevant and I remember when it came out it was much talked about, so I’m glad I finally read it. It’s about an undocumented Chinese worker Polly who gives birth to a son Deming in NYC and tries to make their lives work as a single parent, though she is repaying debts to a loan shark. She switches jobs from a seamstress in a factory to a nail salon technician while she and Deming live with her boyfriend Leon and his sister and her son in the Bronx. 

Polly’s looking to go to Florida for a waitress job which she thinks will be better for them, but then one day when Deming is 11, Polly doesn’t come home and no one can find her. Deming, who’s close to his mother, is left with a hole in his heart, thinking she’s moved without him. Eventually when she doesn’t return, he’s given to white foster parents in Upstate NY, who raise him and later want him to complete college. But Deming, who develops a gambling problem, can’t give it his full attention. He has a talent for music and playing the guitar, which is his calling but he’s also sort of aimless. He still thinks about his biological mother — and one day when his childhood friend gives him info about her, he tries finding out where she is. 

In alternating chapters, Polly tells her story … and soon things begin to be revealed about what happened and why she left. Meanwhile Deming’s life has been one in limbo — neither fully one culture or another — his identity is convoluted and he hopes in finding his birth mother, he might find himself too. Polly and Deming are characters with problems who might irk you with some of their decisions, but the novel also seems to realistically raise questions about undocumented immigrants and the kids who become disconnected from them, and gives them more nuance and understanding than what we perceive in current events. It’s a pretty potent issue right now and it hit home quite movingly.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen any of these movies or shows, or read this novel — and if so what did you think?

Hi all. My husband and I arrived back home in Canada this week after our long road trip from California. We stopped in Idaho on the way home to visit and ski/snowshoe with my sister and brother-in-law, which was fun. You might recall their dog Sadie is the younger half-sister of our dog Stella, so it’s nice to see them all together. The girls had a good time. Now I’m quickly trying to adapt to the colder temperatures as this weekend is in the single digits here, argh. It feels a bit wild to be back and I’m still adjusting, unpacking, and wondering a bit where we are after our long while in California.

Meanwhile over the past months we’ve been taking in some movies that could be up for Oscar nominations, which apparently will be announced on Jan. 23, if they decide to have the Academy Awards amid the fires and destruction. So here below are the movies we’ve seen. I tried to place them in order of the ones that I liked best. (I’ll leave out TV series for now but might talk about them next time.) 

*A Complete Unknown (5 stars! We loved this Bob Dylan bio film.)
*The Outrun (4 stars. Contemplative, a Scottish girl battles sobriety)
*The Return (4 stars, Homer’s Odyssey, both tough and compelling)
*Conclave (3.8 stars, weaved with intrigue inside the Vatican)
*Small Things Like These (3.4 stars, tale about the deeds of an Irish town’s convent)
*A Different Man (3.3 stars, a bit weird a story about a man with a disfigured face)
*Marie (movie) (3.3 stars, opera singer Marie Callas’s sad last week)
*Blitz (3.3 stars, the WWII bombing of London, full on)
*Juror #2 (3.3 stars, something felt a bit contrived but still worth a watch)
*Lee (3.3 biopic of WWII photographer Lee Miller played by Kate Winslet)

And here are other films we haven’t watch but might be on our list.

*A Real Pain
*The Brutalist
*Janet Planet
*His Three Daughters
*Nightbitch
*The Room Next Door
*September 5
*I’m Still Here (foreign, Brazil)
*All We Imagine as Light (foreign, India)
*Emilia Perez (foreign, musical, Mexico)
*Nickel Boys
*The Substance
*Wicked (musical)

What about you — have you seen any of these and what did you think? Admittedly I was sort of rooting for Timothee Chalamet to win Best Actor at the Golden Globes for his performance as Bob Dylan, but the field was pretty loaded and Adrien Brody won instead for The Brutalist. But it amazed me that Chalamet sang all the songs so convincingly in A Complete Unknown as well as the other actors in the film. Somewhere I read he had prepared for the role for like seven years, wow. Usually we are quite skeptical of biographical movies, so I didn’t expect much, but we both thought this one was fantastic.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of books I finished lately. 

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes / Astra House / 288 pages /translated by Ann Goldstein 2023 / originally published 1952

Thanks to Kathy at the blog Reading Matters for her favorable review of this novel last June, which I hadn’t know about before. The book reminded me quite a bit of the atmosphere of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend set in postwar Italy with its poverty and repression. Set in Rome, the novel’s protagonist is a 43-year-old Italian woman who buys and hides a notebook diary from her family of two teenage kids and her husband. As she begins to secretly write in it, she begins to observe things she hadn’t previously noticed … particularly how her long servitude to her family has squashed her own self. 

This is a domestic story of a family that seems to be a bit on the brink … each member with stuff going on: the banker husband dreams of another career as a screenwriter; the daughter Mirella, a law student, falls for an older man; the idle son Riccardo gets a girl into a situation; and the mother (Valeria), a secretary, begins to have feelings for her boss. 

The mother, who narrates the story, is a bit of a complex character — both sympathetic but also worth strangling at times too. Around and around she goes with her thoughts and indecision whether to do this or that. As she manages the notebook in secret, she begins to transform and fight a bit for her own space and self, becoming a bit meaner, while still trying to hold the family’s outward respectability together. She harangues her daughter about her relationship with a man at work, while she is thinking of a dalliance with her boss. You have to stay tuned to the end to see if the mother succeeds in gaining a bit of independence and what will happen.

At the beginning I thought the book, which I listened to as an audio narrated by Cassandra Campbell, was nonfiction — it sounded so factual, but then as it went along I realized it was a novel. Apparently the author, who wrote about women’s subjugation and was imprisoned for her anti-fascist activities in 1935, was an influence on Elena Ferrante. Forbidden Notebook captured me especially in the later stages when it begins a bit to unravel. And that ending … felt like the air being siphoned out of a room.

The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War by Giles Milton / Holt / 336 pages / 2024

This history kept us tuned in on the long road trip home as we listened to it as an audio, which was narrated by its British author. The book highlights the relations among the Big Three: Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, which played out like a roller coaster of ups and downs and decided the world’s fate during WWII. Early in the war, Stalin was aligned with Hitler (as Germany and Russia invaded Poland) and probably would’ve remained so, except the Fuhrer decided to betray their alliance and invade the Soviet Union in June 1941. This upended things and soon Britain and the U.S. were supporting Russia with aid and supplies to wage war against the Nazis. 
 
Churchill first met with Stalin in August 1942 but told him there’d be no allied invasion of Europe that year much to Stalin’s disapproval. Churchill and Stalin had very chilly relations at first, which later thawed and warmed but also at times seemed to hang precariously in the balance. Then Roosevelt met together with them at the Tehran Conference in Nov. 1943, where both Roosevelt and Churchill seemed to vie for Stalin’s favor, especially as Russia was turning the tide against Germany on the Eastern front. So much depended on the Big Three’s uneasy alliance to defeat Nazi Germany and their interpersonal relations seemed to play a large part of this, but unfortunately it didn’t last once the peace was signed in 1945 … as broken promises, hidden motives, and suspicions broke them apart.
 
Much of the book focuses on the various leaders’ meetings and conferences with the British Ambassador Archie Clark Kerr and American Ambassador Averell Harriman playing a large role in keeping the leaders and alliance on track time and again. Harriman, Roosevelt’s man in Moscow, thought Stalin was inscrutable and contradictory, but in some ways the most effective of the war leaders, while at the same time he was a murderous tyrant. And during the early part of the war when Harriman was in London, the book details Harriman’s secret affair with Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela, who was 28 years his junior and good friends with his own daughter Kathleen! (Neither Churchill or Kathleen led on whether they knew of this.) 
 
Kathleen Harriman plays a pretty big part in the book as she accompanied her father to London during the Blitz and to living in Moscow and various meetings and conferences he had with Churchill and Stalin. Apparently it makes use of new papers and letters of Kathleen’s, which were given to the Library of Congress in 2022 and 2024 by her son. So with these additional documents and insights, fans of Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, might want to check it out.
 
In various ways, the book is a bit of a juicy tale full of intrigue, war, booze, affairs, and big personalities that held things together when the world’s fate hung in the balance. Along with such great reads as The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz, which I reviewed in 2022, and The Churchill Sisters by Rachel Trethewey, which I read in 2023, it provided a glimpse into the dangerous days during WWII and the interpersonal relations among various key players.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books mentioned, or seen these movies, and if so, what did you think?

Hi All, how was your week? Don’t forget to set your clocks forward on Saturday night. I like Daylight Savings Time — as the light seems to stay around longer in the evenings. And there’s more time to work in the fields, lol. But at first, the time change usually throws me off for a while.

And if you’re planning to watch the Academy Awards it’s this Sunday, so mark your ballots. I suspect that Oppenheimer will win some big awards and perhaps Killers of the Flower Moon. We just finished watching American Fiction and the chilling WWII movie The Zone of Interest, which were our last ones over the past year we’ve seen of the Oscar nominees, which include:

• Oppenheimer
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Anatomy of a Fall
• The Zone of Interest
• Maestro
• Napoleon
• American Fiction
• Past Lives
• Golda
• The Holdovers
• Society of Snow
• Nyad
• Priscilla
• May December

They were all pretty good. We haven’t yet watched the film Poor Things, or the Ukraine war documentary 20 Days of Mariupol, which looks harrowing, but I hope it wins Best Documentary to bring more attention to Ukraine’s plight. Happy Oscar viewing.

Meanwhile in addition to the five library books that came in last week that I posted – I received three more this week. Have you read any of these? They look like winners, but how do I squeeze them all in before they’re due, lol. Usually I juggle and pick and choose and then I have to get some back another time.

And now, I will pose this week’s survey question which is: what is the name of the last indie bookstore you visited? And what did you buy? I will start. At Christmas time, I went into a very small bookstore in Alberta called Yooneek Books, which is a different way to spell unique I gather, and I picked up a nonfiction book entitled: Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War by Zhuquing Li. I have not read it yet, but the author teaches East Asian Studies at Brown University, and it looks like a sad and informative story about her aunts’ lives. What about you — what was your last indie visit?

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of what I finished lately.

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips / Knopf / 304 pages / 2023

I loved the storytelling in this novel, which I listened to on audio. Much of it is about a 12-year-old girl ConaLee and her mute mother Eliza, who are being taken by a depraved ruthless man called “Papa” to a lunatic asylum in 1874, where he says Eliza will be cured. The asylum, run by real-life Dr. Story Kirkbride, offers the two refuge from the dangerous world where they’ve come from.

Since the Civil War days of 1864 mother and daughter had been living in a cabin up on a mountain ridge in West Virginia trying to avoid thieves and stragglers from the war, soldiers up to no good. Eliza’s husband left years earlier to fight on the Union side and he hasn’t been heard from since. Neighbor Dearbhla takes the horse to search for him believing him injured in a hospital. While she’s away, the Confederate-sided Papa makes his entrance terrorizing Eliza in a scene that will set off trigger warnings for various readers. By the time, ConaLee and Eliza get to the asylum you feel as about as much relief as they do. The place seems to have an interesting night watchman, a benevolent founder in Dr. Story, an orphan named Weed, and a tough woman who runs the kitchen.

As the story bounces between 1864 and 1874, connections begin to form of who the real father of ConaLee is and what happened to him and what will become of Eliza, her care, and ConaLee, who joins the staff at the asylum. It’s a wonderfully told story that’s both dark — for its wartime shatterings — and light — with the refuge of the asylum. I didn’t know of author Jayne Anne Phillips before, but I’d like to read more of her books in the future.

My Friend Anne Frank by Hannah Pick-Goslar / Little Brown Spark / 2023

The author’s own story and her friendship with Anne Frank are very powerful in this recounting. Although she shared her life story for many decades after the Holocaust, this was my first time knowing about Hannah Pick-Goslar and her friendship with Anne Frank. I feel remiss in not knowing about her earlier.

Hannah and Anne met and knew each other as young neighbors and classmates in Amsterdam and into their pre-teen years when the Nazi roundups began. Like Anne, Hannah suffered much during World War II, though her path differed a bit. When the roundups started, Anne’s family disappeared and went into hiding in 1942, but Hannah’s family stayed and got caught up in 1943 and was sent to Westerbok transit camp. Later in Feb. 1944 Hannah and her family were taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, where she says her path crossed once again with Anne’s sometime early in 1945.

Apparently one day Hannah heard Anne’s voice on the other side of a fence. When I was listening to the audio — I could scarcely believe it, so emotional to even imagine. Did they really briefly reunite once more?! I like to think or hope so. But by that time Anne was starving and not well and Hannah tried to throw her some food. But then didn’t see her again. Near the war’s end, Hannah tells of how she was one of thousands of Jewish prisoners forced onto the Lost Train to Poland where she was without food or water for 13 days … before being liberated by Russian troops.

Hannah’s years post-war, which she also writes about, are interesting … how she became a nurse and moved to Israel and was in touch with Otto Frank, Anne’s father, who was on a quest to publish Anne’s diary. It goes on to describe how Hannah went on her first speaking tour in the U.S. about the Holocaust in 1957, letting people know of the horrors and genocide and what happened to her friend Anne. And she continued nearly until she died in October 2022, giving talks about Anne and the Holocaust and letting students know.

Hannah was an amazing heroine and one of the last eyewitnesses to the Nazi genocide. Her memoir was made possible thanks to Tel Aviv journalist Dina Kraft who began a series of interviews with her before she passed. This moving and scary memoir is worth its weight in gold and then some.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and what did you think?

Hi All. Happy Valentine’s. Woohoo. I hope you can have a nice dinner tonight with your sweetheart, and/or exchange cards and maybe even flowers — ha, go for broke, lol. Here are two of my sweeties, Willow, age 3, and Stella, age 11. They like their balls, walks, and meals … of course.

And can you believe we’re already into mid-February. Most people have a holiday on Monday, so perhaps you have plans to get away? I’ll be reffing a tennis tournament all weekend, starting on Friday, and they say it could be 14-hour days, ouch. So cross your fingers that my new knee can hold up as I will be standing a lot of the time. 

Meanwhile, we will continue the reading survey we’ve been having with the question of what is your favorite or preferred genre or book category to read? Is it mystery, crime, sci-fi, thrillers, fantasy, general nonfiction, literary fiction, classics, romance, historical fiction, memoir, or what? I think it’s okay to have two.Try to be as specific as you can, and maybe also give an example of a book in that category that you liked.

I would say my preferred genre is literary fiction —Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels such as Never Let Me Go are a favorite — and I also like historical fiction such as the recent In Memoriam by Alice Winn or The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Perhaps I’d also include contemporary fiction, too, as a category I enjoy.

Check out the photo above is what I see from the office window. It’s another view from last week’s post of the office’s bookshelves. 

And this week I am reading Laura Spence-Ash’s 2023 debut novel Beyond That, the Sea, which I heard about from a couple bloggers including Constance over at the blog Staircase Wit. It’s a compelling story about a married couple in London who send their 11-year-old daughter over to America when the Germans begin to bomb the city in 1940. The girl Beatrix comes to live with a family in Boston that really take to her, especially when they go to their summer place on an island in Maine. Its chapters alternate among Beatrix, her new family members, and the parents she left behind.

I won’t say much more till I finish and review it, but I’m enjoying the story, which follows “Bea” and her relations with the family from 1940 all the way to 1977.

I’m also listening to the audiobook of Mark Twain’s 1876 classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (see the first edition front picture at left). It’s been a long time since I encountered the mischievous character Tom Sawyer and his sidekick Huckleberry Finn, whose Adventures I plan to revisit next, but author Percival Everett has a new novel called James coming out March 19 that reimagines the tale of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. So I’m gearing up by returning to Twain’s classic tales.

Everett’s novel James has already received such raves that I’m eager to read it once the library gets it in. I have not tried Percival Everett before, but I would like to read a couple of his other novels too.

Lastly I’ll just mention, my husband and I have been on a mission to see some of the Oscar-nominated movies before the Academy Awards show on March 10. Here are the ones we’ve seen so far. They’ve all been pretty good. I tried to put them in some kind of order, but I’m not sure it’s my final numbering just yet. I’m still tinkering.

• Oppenheimer
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Maestro
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Napoleon
• Golda
• Society of Snow 
• Nyad
• Priscilla 
• May December 

And here are the nominated films that we still hope to see beforehand: 

• Poor Things
• The Zone of Interest
• American Fiction
• Past Lives
• 20 days of Mariupol 
• Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning 
• Barbie 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen any of these and if so, what did you think? 

Hi all. I hope everyone is well and enjoying their holiday break. We are getting close to 2024 now, so I hope you have chosen your first book to read in the new year. I plan to share my first book next week. Meanwhile we just got back from a little road trip a couple hours away where we took the dogs to go cross-country skiing.

Well, really my husband went to ski and I read because I’m not supposed to do sports yet due to my new knee. I need to wait till about three months post-surgery to commence activities. Right now I just passed my one-month mark, yay. But the snow in Western Canadian has not been good so far. It’s so minimal that people are rock skiing, I think. My husband took the dogs mostly hiking instead.

Over break we’ve seen two pretty good movies. We streamed the murder, courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which is a French movie (mostly told in English) that’s a bit unsettling. The court case reveals the turbulence between a wife, who’s a writer, and her husband, and the thoughts of their blind son on what might have happened between them.

The movie goes on a bit long in the middle section but then has a pretty absorbing ending. German actress Sandra Hüller stars and is pretty convincing in the role. Critics seemed to like this crime drama and it wound up on various Best Of lists. We thought it was pretty compelling and gave it a thumbs up.

Next we watched the biographical movie Maestro about composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein on Netflix. Whoa Bradley Cooper stars, directed, and co-wrote the script for this film, which focuses on the relationship between Bernstein and his wife Felicia, played by British actress Carey Mulligan.

Much of the acting in this is terrific from both actors, and the music is alluring. Their marriage certainly had its tough challenges hidden from the world but also its very close connection. I know Cooper received a lot of flak for using a fake nose for the role, but it didn’t seem to distract me from the story. In many scenes, Cooper looked quite a bit like the Maestro himself … who it turns out was a complex man personally as well as a big chainsmoker. The movie, which explores this as well as his musical genius, was done to interesting effect.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of the last books I completed in 2023.

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita / Berkley / 304 pages / 2023

3.7 stars. It’s not often I read a thriller type mystery/crime novel, but I enjoyed this debut and the pages flew by quickly. It has great atmosphere — set in a small wintry hamlet in Alaska where most of the residents live in a big apartment-like building.

Then the town gets cut off when a storm and avalanche closes the road out and Detective Cara Kennedy (from Anchorage) gets stuck there investigating a case of body parts found on a beach of a nearby cove. Cara has had her own family tragedies and has come to the town to see if there’s a link with the case. She partners with local cop JB and they make a good duo.

The story is told in alternating chapters by three women: Cara (the detective); Amy, a teenager who finds the bodies and lives in the big apartment building; and Lonnie, a woman with some mental disability who might know about some evidence. They are all pretty well-rendered, but the detective’s chapters seem the most compelling. I will likely follow Det. Kennedy who’s also in the author’s next novel coming in February 2024 called Village in the Dark, set once again in a chilly Alaska locale.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith / Atria /320 pgs /2023

This was my last book and last audio of the year, which is narrated by the author. Granted I didn’t know anything about this memoir when I picked it up. In a dumb way, I thought it was about the other Maggie Smith, the British actress, but no it’s about the American poet from Ohio, whom I didn’t know about before this. Now I do, and quite a bit! She lays her life out pretty open and bare for all to see.

Her whole book is a series of short snapshots about her life with her two young kids, and the divorce she went through with her husband of some 18 years. It’s a divorce memoir through and through! The author, who tried to save the marriage after finding out about her husband’s infidelity, is just crushed by the long torturous split and ordeal with her once soulmate. They were said to be the last couple who’d ever get a divorce. But after counseling the marriage couldn’t be saved and he moved away to another state much to the sorrows of their family.

Maggie powerfully and lyrically as a poet tells about their split as she agonizes and feels the intense pain of it, the dissolution happening during the pandemic. After I started, I wondered if I should even be listening to the book during Christmas break? It was sad and I felt for the author. But maybe the book had lessons: like don’t take your partner for granted? Watch for the signs? I think for those who are going through a divorce or have, this book might be very helpful and consoling and something appealing to grab onto like a life raft for survival.

I thought the parts about Maggie’s work life and how her life as a writer or freelancer were not treated equally or as respectfully with that of her husband’s work life – pretty revealing and I think it spoke to a lot of couples’ work lives. One person’s is often at the expense of the other’s. I hope Maggie is in a better place now, various years later after her divorce. She certainly was in a dark place going through this, yet she also yields some humor and essential truths in writing about the experience.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or seen these movies — and if so, what did you think? Happy New Year.

Hi. I hope everyone one is doing well and enjoying the holiday season. We had some snow last week so it looks like we might have a white Christmas after all, yay. At least there’s enough for my husband and dogs to do some cross-country skiing.

Meanwhile you might have noticed that I didn’t post a December Preview edition this month because of my knee surgery, but we should probably chat about possible movies to see this holiday season. It’s typically the time of year for some of the best movies to come out, so I have listed various ones below that are on my list to see. Let me know what you think, if you plan to see these, or if I’m missing any notable ones.

Over the weekend we watched two movies that were pretty decent. First Leave the World Behind based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam is a doozy about a family whose vacation getaway to a luxurious rental home turns ominous when some kind of disturbance knocks out their devices and two strangers appear at their door. Uh-oh.

I liked the novel so I was geared up for the Netflix movie, which stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke among others. It’s quite an unsettling, eerie story that made me worry about an attack and the end of the world. It’s better not to say too much so as not to ruin it, but the movie seems to go beyond the novel. It takes the story further, changes a couple things, and clarifies a bit more what’s happened. I thought it was effective — maybe not as good as the book — but it’s still mysterious and chilling. 

We also watched the Joan Baez documentary I am a Noise — in which the legendary folk singer takes a look back at her life while she concludes her last musical concert tour. The doc follows her life: her family, musical career, relationships (including with Bob Dylan) and activism.

She was only a teenager in 1958 when she began singing in clubs around Boston and then her breakthrough came performing at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. The rest is pretty much history as she skyrocketed to fame and sang and made music for the next six decades. It’s quite a story and the photos and footage from her early years are particularly wonderful, but it’s also surprising how personal the doc gets, spending a lot of time on Baez’s mental struggles and conflicts within her family. I guess I would have liked a bit more on the music and a tad less on her private demons. Still it’s worth seeing. 

Now below are a list of recent and upcoming movies, mostly in order of their release, which I hope to check out:

1. Anatomy of a Fall — A courtroom drama set in France about a woman writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, which also takes a toll on her son. (Stars Sandra Huller).
2. The Holdovers —  A comedy-drama set in 1970 about a cranky history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone a handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. Stars Paul Giamatti. 
3. May December (Netflix) — Based on the teacher Mary Kay Letourneau who had an illegal relationship with one of her young students. (Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore star).
4. Priscilla — A biographical-drama based on the memoir by Priscilla Presley about her years with Elvis. Directed by Sofia Coppola.
5. Maestro (Netflix) — A biographical-drama centered on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan).
6. American Fiction — (wide release Dec. 22) A comedy-drama that follows a frustrated Black novelist and professor (played by Jeffrey Wright) who jokingly writes a stereotypical “Black” book out of spite, which later is published and receives widespread fame. 
7. Ferrari — (due out Dec. 25) A biographical sports drama that follows the struggles of Enzo Ferrari, the Italian founder of the car manufacturer, as he pushes his drivers to the edge in a treacherous race across Italy in the summer of 1957. Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley and Penelope Cruz star. 
8. The Boys in the Boat (due out Dec. 25) — Based on the bestselling book by Daniel James Brown about the University of Washington rowing team and their efforts at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Directed by George Clooney. 
9. Origin — (wider release Jan. 19) A biographical drama about journalist Isabel Wilkerson, who while grappling with tragedy sets herself on a path of discovery as she writes Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Ava DuVernay directs.

So there you have it. Do any of these appeal to you? I hope they’ll be good.

And now I’ll leave you with a review of a novel I finished lately. 

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane / Farrar Straus / 256 pages / 2013

I returned to a backlist read with this debut novel from 2013 because I had read the author’s second novel The Sun Walks Down in September and decided I needed to go back and check this one out too. I wasn’t disappointed. After two novels, Fiona McFarlane is now my new favorite Australian author … which is a high literary honor that once went to the renown Tim Winton but now I’ve passed onto her.

This debut is a squirm-worthy tale about a senior woman named Ruth Field, 75, who’s living in a rural area along the coast of Australia. She’s a fairly recent widow whose two sons call her weekly from abroad to check on her. But for her two cats, Ruth seems pretty isolated and struggling a bit with aging and loneliness. She even hears the sounds of a tiger one night that scares her and makes one wonder if she’s really cognitively sound. 

Then out of the blue a lady arrives named Frida Young who says she’s been sent as a caregiver to help Ruth with everyday life. The two women become quite reliant on one another, and later Ruth reconnects with a long-ago beau (now 80) from her youth growing up as a missionary child in Fiji. You root for Ruth to find happiness and love with Richard in her later years, but then after a few incidences you begin to wonder if Ruth’s not entirely in charge of her faculties and if Frida isn’t really all what she seems. 

That’s when things get a bit squirmy and you need to race to the end to find out what happens. This novel touches on caring for seniors and themes of love, trust, dependence and duplicity. It made me feel sorry for Ruth and want to protect her. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this author or watched any of these movies — and if you so, what did you think? 

Hello. We are into March now. Yay. Usually it seems we get more snow in March, though typically it’s pretty snow and meanwhile the days are getting longer and eventually warmer. I have yet to post my March Preview of new releases as I’ve been busy with my part-time jobs lately so I will try for next week with that. All in due time I guess. And the good news is: it looks like an offer on our previous house will likely go through so we are pleased with that. I’m sure we will be sad to see it go but pleased that another family can enjoy it as much as we did for many years. 

Of course March brings to mind college basketball and “March Madness,” which starts March 14, so it’s almost a week away. Time is flying now. Also the Academy Awards is on this coming Sunday. We have seen some of the nominated films including: Elvis, The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin, Tar, Living, The Whale, and Top Gun: Maverick. But we haven’t seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, which has gained a lot of momentum over the past month. Will it win Best Picture? Perhaps it will.

So far I don’t have a particular movie favorite. I liked all the nominated films I saw but not sure any are my pick for Best Picture. Hmm. This week I still hope to see Women Talking (nominated for Best Picture) as well as Navalny (nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film). I wish Mr. Navalny had not returned to Russia in 2021 after being treated in Germany for being poisoned. Ugh, now he remains in Russia imprisoned for being an activist against Putin, and who knows if he can ever get out. The film on him will hopefully draw more attention to him and other protestors. So what about you — do you plan to watch the Oscars? 

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of the books I finished lately. 

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson / Knopf Canada / 304 pages / 2021

I agree with others who gave this novel a 5-star rating. Canadian author Mary Lawson is a natural-born storyteller and her sensibilities with this one are right on. I had read her 2002 debut novel Crow Lake, which I recall being pretty sad and grim (though good) years ago, but this story was more endearing to me and pulled at the heartstrings. I was surprised at first how easy reading it is – almost perhaps like written for a middle school reader though it’s also beautifully-wrought and transportive. 

It took me to its setting of a very small town in Northern Ontario, Canada, in no time at all. The story’s chapters alternate between three characters: Clara, age 7, whose sister (Rose, age 16) goes missing; Elizabeth, an elderly neighbor of Clara’s who goes into the hospital; and Liam, a newly divorced man in his mid-thirties who moves into Elizabeth’s house. Soon enough, you find out how their troubled stories intersect and what happens to the dilemma of Rose’s disappearance. I liked each of their stories but perhaps Liam’s and Clara’s best, then Elizabeth’s. Clara is worried about her sister; Liam is down about his divorce; and Elizabeth is thinking over an event from her past. Down the road, they all intersect in an interesting way and the mystery over Rose is solved. 

I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up this novel, but apparently it was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. I was touched by this tale, which went by quickly, and was pleased that it didn’t get overly dark and grim. It’s just a quiet, heartfelt tale all around. Author Mary Lawson is a gem of a writer, and along with Alice Munro and Michael Crummey, she’s a Canadian favorite of mine — and likely many others.

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life by Delia Ephron / Little Brown /
304 pages / 2022 

Synopsis: This memoir follows the author’s life from 2015, right after Jerry, her husband of many decades, dies and she tries to pick up the pieces.  She ends up finding new love but then is diagnosed with leukemia, the same kind her sister Nora Ephron died from in 2012. 

I loved the author Delia’s courage in undergoing a bone marrow transplant (in her 70s!) to try and save her life after finding new love at age 72 … to a seemingly wonderful man named Peter who remains by her side through the harshest days of cancer treatment. This memoir is at times harrowing but also life-affirming too. I was holding on as best I could and rooting for Delia to pull through. I especially liked the author’s reading of the audiobook. In it she seems quite open and honest about her life, like she’s telling you personally about her story in your living room. It’s very conversational. And what a rollercoaster story it is. 

After suffering through the deaths of her famous sister Nora Ephron in 2012 and her husband Jerry in 2015 to cancer, she finds new love with Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, only to get a leukemia diagnosis several months later in 2017. Whoa Delia is dealt a very heavy deck of cards. But with the right doctors and friends and support, she manages to find a will and a way. I’m still not sure how. In this memoir, she’s witty at times, grateful, candid, and also a dog lover, which makes her telling all the more endearing. It’s quite tragic Delia got the same cancer as her sister Nora … and whereas Nora decided against the agonizing bone marrow transplant, Delia went through with it after finding a donor match. I had no idea she had gone through all this agony — I remember reading her 2016 novel Siracusa and liking it. Her memoir is a pretty gripping listen and a testament to second chances and being close to those you hold dear.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and if so, what did you think? 

Hi everyone. I hope you are having a great start to the new year. We are in the midst of packing up the house right now in order to move. It’s been a bit crazy because we are still waiting for the renovations to finish at the new place. It’s coming down to the wire for when our movers are coming in a week, argh. 

Anyways, I’ve filled a lot of boxes in preparation. And who knew you could accumulate so much in 14 years. It’s just all the closets, drawers, and books, oh goodness! I think I forgot about it when I last moved in 2008 from Arlington, Va., and had to get rid of all my furniture to come to Canada. I sold it on Craigslist, or something. People came and drove it away. Now I’m trying to pare down the books, which is hard. 

In other news, the Oscar nominations will be announced Jan. 24 and I’ve been seeing some films that will likely be Oscar contenders. So far I’ve seen these films below: 

• Elvis for which actor Austin Butler gave an amazing performance
• She Said which is a strong #MeToo flick
• The Fabelmans based on Steven Spielberg’s family and early childhood 
• Tar in which Cate Blanchett plays a star orchestra composer-conductor, and 
• The Whale that tells the story of a morbidly obese man’s troubles

I just saw The Whale with Brendan Fraser and it’s quite powerful. I was sort of blown out of my chair by the end. It all takes place in the lead character Charlie’s apartment as he goes about his life as an online English teacher while dealing with his health issues and trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

When you see it, you can tell it’s based on a play (by Samuel D. Hunter in 2012) because the dialogue and characters play out in close proximity. There’s a nurse who comes by to check on Charlie and then his teenage daughter and ex-wife, as well as a young missionary boy who says he’s trying to save Charlie. So it’s interesting how these characters interact and what comes to pass in Charlie’s life. There’s much pain and anger in this story! But man it cuts to the heart too. See it at your own discretion.

Other likely Oscar contenders I still want to see are the Irish film The Banshees of Inisherin about a lifelong friendship that stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, Women Talking about a Mennonite colony, and Living that’s set in 1950s London, starring Bill Nighy. Have you seen any of these movies or the ones above? 

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of novels I finished lately. 

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy / Riverhead / 304 pages / 2022

Whoa this is a tragic story but so well told. The novel and circumstance really gave me a flavor of Northern Ireland in the 1970s during the Troubles and it seems certainly one of the best novels I’ve read about the time, place, and people caught up in the ongoing violence. 

The story is about: Cushla, a 24-year-old Catholic woman, who lives outside Belfast, works as teacher during the day, and takes care of her alcoholic mother at night. Sometimes she fills in at her family’s pub, which her brother runs. There she meets an older Protestant married barrister (Michael) who invites her to attend Irish/Gaelic language classes with a group of his friends. Pretty soon a clandestine affair develops between them, which Cushla tries to control and keep under wraps — while also trying to help out a young boy (Davy) at school who’s being bullied. Later when his father is attacked by sectarian violence and put into the hospital, things begin to unravel and play out for all. 

Uh-oh Cushla has a lot on her plate: her alcoholic mother, her student’s problems, and her secret affair that will have grave consequences if anyone finds out. 

The story starts out pretty slowly but picks up from late middle to the end. The gritty descriptions of the time, place, and violence seem spot on (much alcohol, cigarettes, and sex in this) and captivatingly reveal Cushla’s emotions of getting involved with an older married man who’s Protestant. You’ll want to find out what happens to them all. By the end I was pretty ripped apart. Kudos to the author. It’s hard to believe this was her first novel. 

Women Talking by Miriam Toews / Bloomsbury / 240 pages / 2018

Yep this was my first completed book in 2023! I picked it up so I would get a better idea of it when I see the feature film coming out starring a wide array of actresses. I listened to the audiobook read very well by actor Matthew Edison.

And whoa this is quite a dark and disturbing story about a Mennonite colony whose women are being attacked at night while they sleep. At first they think it’s demons or something, but then they realize it’s some men in the colony who are drugging them (this is not giving anything away as it’s told early on that’s what has happened).

Thereafter most of the novel consists of two days of eight women — who are illiterate and never been out in the world — discussing how they plan to proceed to what’s happened. Around and round they go making arguments for and against about whether to stay and fight for their safety and security, or to leave the religious colony altogether. Their discussions get quite philosophical as they explore the rationale behind their thinking and what they want for their future and how their faith shapes their beliefs too. Granted I got a bit impatient waiting for them to make up their minds on what to do when I felt ready from the get-go.

But the women here are at a big disadvantage since in their Mennonite colony all the power rests with the men: the rules, how they live, and that the women are not allowed even to learn how to read or write. Cripes it’s hard to fathom that this horrible society exists (like the Taliban?), but the novel is based on a true story of a colony in Bolivia in 2009. 

I thought it was clever how the story is narrated by August Epps, a former ex-communicated male colony member, who takes the minutes of the women’s meetings, writing them down and sympathizing with their cause. And though at first I couldn’t seem to keep track of the various female characters in the story and their points of view, as it went on I became more familiar with them and a couple heroes in their midst began to step forward: namely Ona and Salome. These women show much courage by plotting a way forward for the women, and a sense of suspense and danger emerge towards the end. Perhaps the story’s middle had a little too much talking and not enough action but that was my only qualm in a story that otherwise was very effective and scary to contemplate.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or seen the movies and if so, what did you think?