Mary Coin (Marisa Silver)

The Depression era photo of a woman with a hand on her face surrounded by her children is one of the most famous images ever taken.  Snapped by photographer Dorothea Lange in 1936, Migrant Mother shows a woman by the name of Florence Owens Thompson and is stunning in its stark simplicity.  In Marisa Silver's equally stunning novel Mary Coin, she reimagines the lives of the woman in the famous image and the photographer who took it.

Silver's story follows three fictional characters, Mary Coin, Vera Dare, and Walker Dodge.  Coin is a mother several times over who is just trying to do the best she can by her children during one of the darkest periods in American history.  Dare is having an equally hard time, attempting to reconcile her job of taking photographs of wealthy women with the depression that is happening outside her walls.  Walker is a professor of social history, and the reader is left guessing about how his story will eventually interact with Coin.

When Dare meets up with Coin and her children, she takes the photograph that eventually would become so famous.  Silver doesn't use Lange's and Thompson's real names in the novel, but her description of how the photo may have been taken is enthralling.  The professor's story seemed at times to be extraneous; I think the women's stories during the Great Depression and their lives thereafter would have been
enough to make this novel superb.

MY RATING - 4

Skinny Bitch in Love (Kim Barnouin)

What can one say about a book titled Skinny Bitch in Love?  If you read it and think it’s going to be world-class literature, then I have beachfront property I’d like to sell you in Kansas.  Kim Barnouin has brought her wildly popular Skinny Bitch no-nonsense dieting empire (which she developed along with Rory Freedman) to chick lit, writing a surprisingly enjoyable quick read.

The staff of a popular vegan restaurant, including chef Clementine Cooper, is all atwitter, knowing that a renowned food critic will be making an appearance that night.  After the critic suddenly leaves, it’s determined that the chef’s butternut squash dish was sabotaged with….dum, dum, dum….real butter!!!  Clementine’s reputation is ruined; every other vegan restaurant blacklists her, so she is unable to find another position.  When a friend suggests that her talent could lead her into vegan cooking classes and baking for coffee shops, Clem begins to see that her life is not over.  With stereotypical characters like a sassy roommate, a gorgeous boyfriend, and another guy pining away for her, Skinny Bitch in Love subscribes to the tried-and-true chick lit formula.

Some reviews have pointed out that this novel is too preachy about the vegan lifestyle.  I disagree.  I actually learned a lot about veganism and especially enjoyed the food parts.  Barnouin’s view that it is not all "crunchy granola" really resonated with me.  Who knew you could have vanilla chai cupcakes and tropical fruit scones?  Sign me up!

MY RATING - 3

The Clover House (Henriette Lazaridis Power)

The Clover House, Henriette Lazaridis Power's debut novel, has been listed in the "If you liked Tatiana de Rosnay's Sarah's Key, then you'll love..." recommendation column.  However, with the exception of both being historical fiction books about World War II, I found little comparison.  While Sarah's Key is gripping and heartbreaking, holding your attention until the very end, The Clover House does so only in waves.  However, wartime Greece is thoroughly researched by Ms. Power to deliver a multi-generational, textured story.

Callie is a Greek American living in Boston with her fiance, Jonah.  She grew up in the United States, but her mother, Clio, took the first opportunity to move back to Greece after her husband passed away.  When Clio gets a call that her Uncle Nestor not only has died, but has left all of his earthly possessions to her, she heads back to the land of her heritage.  Clio is desperate to keep a secret from Callie, but Nestor seems determined to let the secret be known even in his death.

The book alternates between Callie's modern-day adventure and Clio's adolescence in Greece.  I felt like The Clover House would have worked better if the reader was able to experience what happened through Clio's eyes first, rather than hearing about it secondhand through Callie's chapters.  However, even though the book is a little dry and takes awhile to get going, I encourage the reader to stick with it for a fascinating look into Greek history.

MY RATING - 3

Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)

I was excited to devour Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life as the latest selection in my book club.  It got a lot of buzz in the media, but reviews were very mixed, as it seemed like people either absolutely loved it or…didn’t love it.  While I applaud Atkinson for the monumental effort that writing a novel like this entails, I unfortunately was in the latter category.

The title of Life After Life could not be more perfect.  Atkinson raises the question we all sometimes wish we could answer.  How would you live your life over if you had a do-over?  In Ursula, the main character’s case, she has many do-overs, constantly reliving the same periods in her very British life with changes (sometimes major and sometimes subtle).  At the very beginning, she has the opportunity to kill someone who, if he didn’t exist, would completely change the course of history for the better.

It is very difficult to write about Life After Life because it’s incredibly hard to explain the plot.  The reader (as well as Ursula) feels a constant sense of déjà vu.  For me, reading this novel was bordering on a chore; the accordion-style dating of the chapters was very confusing and made me constantly have to go back and forth to get things straight.  I was hoping that it would all come together at the end and allow me to have an “A-ha!” moment, but that never materialized.  Instead, I was left even more confused.  However, you as a reader might love it.  Regardless of your feelings, no one can dispute the fact of Atkinson’s ambitious undertaking to put Life After Life together.

MY RATING - 2

Island Girls (Nancy Thayer)

There are some books that were just made to be thrown in a beach bag with your sunblock and towel.  Island Girls by Nancy Thayer is one of them, from the picture on the cover to the very implausible plot, to the wealthy, gorgeous characters.

Rory Randall has just died and stipulates in his will that his three daughters (from his three wives) must live together in his Nantucket house for a summer.  At the end of the season, Arden, Meg, and Jenny will be allowed to sell the house and split the money.  The three women have barely been speaking, due to a long-ago incident involving Justine, Jenny’s mother.  As the summer eases along, the women discover that their forced togetherness may not be so bad after all.

When Island Girls gets the moms involved, it becomes a little too unbelievable (literally) for my taste.  It’s like The First Wives Club in book form.  You can see that Thayer tried to impose a little substance into the material, but it succeeds more as a breezy beach book.

MY RATING - 3

Flora (Gail Godwin)

Have you ever read a book waiting with bated breath for something to happen, and when something happens, EVERYTHING happens? Such is the case with Gail Godwin’s Flora. 

The title character is a simple-hearted but overly emotional woman who is asked to stay with a young girl, Helen, during the summer while Helen’s father goes off to do a job.  All we know at the beginning is that this job is somehow related to World War II, which is when this novel is set.  Helen is not keen at all on this, having just lost her beloved grandmother.  To make matters worse, her father forbids Flora from letting Helen see any friends or go anywhere due to a polio outbreak.  Helen is prone to jealousy and normal “tween” feelings, especially when the local grocery delivery man takes a liking to Flora. 

There is no outlined plot to Flora, so if you like your novels with tons of action, this is not the book for you.  In a nutshell, the reader is let into the fishbowl of Helen and Flora’s summer, which is interspersed with colorful characters and historically significant developments.  However, the main relationship, between Helen and Flora, isn’t fully fleshed out.  By the time something major happens (and believe me, you’re waiting a long time), it seems like an afterthought by Godwin.  Perhaps she wanted to lull the reader into a state of contentment, but for me, it just wasn’t enough substance.

MY RATING - 3

Schroder (Amity Gaige)

Amity Gaige’s Schroder is an exquisitely written novel that takes the reader completely inside a confession to the main character’s wife.  From the beginning, you know that the confessor, Erik Schroder, is a very unreliable narrator, so from that point forward, you don’t know whether to believe anything he says. 

The novel begins with Erik as a young boy living in Boston, having recently immigrated into the country from Germany with his father.  On a whim, he impulsively changes his name to Eric Kennedy on a summer camp application, and from that point on, that alias is what he is known by (unbeknownst to his father).  He grows up, gets married to Laura, and eventually they have a daughter, Meadow.  The family is happy for awhile, but as often happens nowadays, they grow apart.  Eric is not happy with his child’s custody arrangement and so decides to take matters into his own hands by kidnapping her.  The reader believes that Meadow is perfectly safe in Eric’s hands, but Schroder gets more and more intense when she discovers this may not be entirely true.

Gaige’s choice to use Eric’s written confession to Laura as her storytelling method works incredibly well.  Schroder is very hard to put down, and even though Eric has been lying his whole life, the reader sympathizes with him, even through the abduction of his daughter.  However, I needed much more closure and confrontation at the end and wish that Gaige had satisfied these wishes.  I was left with more questions than anything, and that’s not how I like my books to end.  However, Gaige works wonders with words, making Schroder a totally worthwhile read.

MY RATING - 4