Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova ***

Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children—Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month-old Linus.
Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son’s teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it’s a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller. Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long. In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah relinquishes control to those around her, including her formerly absent mother. Without the ability to even floss her own teeth, she struggles to find answers about her past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny—her new, true life—may in fact lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets. And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach, if only she slows down long enough to notice.

I thought this book was good, but not great. The first few chapters drew me in. I liked the main character and could relate to her life; but it went down hill from there. I wasn't as fond of the dream sequences, where each chapter started with a description of a weird dream that the main character had... I knew those dreams were a way to show how her life was spinning out of control, and that they'd stop after the accident, but I didn't like them. Fortunately, they were written in italics, and I could flip past them and get straight to the 'real' story.

Full disclosure - I picked up this book because I've had a traumatic brain injury, and it's about a similar injury to mine, stemming from the same sort of accident. I read that the author has her PhD in neuroscience from Harvard, and I wondered how accurate the book would be. I was a bit disappointed that she didn't touch on any of the other issues that stem from a right hemisphere brain injury - it focused entirely on Left Neglect (when the brain doesn't recognize the left side) and left out everything else - that made it harder for me to buy into the story. Luckily for me, I did not experience left neglect; but I did (do) deal with a whole host of other issues stemming from the brain injury that weren't even mentioned in the book. I found it unrealistic that she only had that one (major) problem to deal with. That left the story feeling incomplete to me.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak ****

Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesel's story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.

This is an excellent book. It's a story narrated by Death, who tells about a young girl who is left with a German foster family during WWII. Her communist parents are unable to care for her and her brother, and her brother dies en route to the foster family's home. Her foster family teaches her to read and embraces her in their life as they live through air raids, food rationing and hiding a Jew in their basement. Every chapter is a little story of its own - very well done, and not nearly as dark as you'd expect.

My Best Friend's Girl, by Dorothy Koomson ***1/2

When Kamryn (Ryn) Matika gets a call from college friend Adele Del Brannon, she reluctantly heads to the hospital where Adele is dying of cancer. The two had been odd couple friends (working-class Ryn is black, posh Adele is white) while attending Leeds University, but their friendship did not survive Del's admission of an affair with Ryn's fiancé Nate Turner, which also ended Ryn's relationship with Nate. The affair did result, however, in the now-five-year-old Tegan, and Del has called Ryn to ask her to adopt the adorable girl. Ryn agrees, but must face down Del's stepmother, Muriel, to do it. She finds surprising help from new boss Luke Wiseman, who, after meeting her unceremoniously, loves Tegan (and eventually Ryn, too), but the return of Nate, who doesn't know Tegan is his daughter, promises to reopen old wounds. Koomson's U.S. debut is a three-hankie delight. (Mar.)

I picked this book up because I thought the idea was original. If your best friend cheated on you with your fiancé and got pregnant, could you raise the child? It's an interesting idea that I thought was handled well from the beginning. I also liked the descriptions of Ryn transitioning from a career minded single female to somebody who is very suddenly a single mother. I thought that the start of this book was excellent, but was a little disappointed that the ending turned more into a story about a love triangle and romantic angst. I wish the focus could have stayed with the little girl, and the adjustment of adding her to Ryn's life. It was a pretty good book, though, and a quick easy read. I liked it, but it wasn't spectacular.

The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton ****

Like Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic The Secret Garden, Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting--from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot. This hidden bit of earth revives barren hearts, while the mysterious Authoress's fairy tales (every bit as magical and sinister as Grimm's) whisper truths and ignite the imaginary lives of children. As Morton draws you through a thicket of secrets that spans generations, her story could cross into fairy tale territory if her characters weren't clothed in such complex flesh, their judgment blurred by the heady stench of emotions (envy, lust, pride, love) that furtively flourished in the glasshouse of Edwardian society. While most ache for a spotless mind's eternal sunshine, the Authoress meets the past as "a cruel mistress with whom we must all learn to dance," and her stories gift children with this vital muscle memory. --Mari Malcolm --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I think the description of this book is deceiving. It's not the "Secret Garden, and it's not about fairy tails. Fairy tails are discussed in the story, but not part of the plot. Based on the description, I expected another "Secret Garden"; maybe a little "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe"... that was my own assumption, but I think I was a little disappointed when it was proven wrong.

This book is a mystery about how a little girl wound up on a ship across the world by herself. She ends up in Australia with amnesia (which is never really explained) and doesn't know who she is or where she came from. She's adopted by a family and grows up to live what seems like a fairly normal life. The story begins when her granddaughter discovers some of her history, and heads to England to find out the rest. There are flashbacks between the granddaughter, the child who was abandoned and her parents. The book wasn't an easy read, but it was enjoyable. I think the closer I got to the end and started finding answers, the more I liked it. That said, it was also a bit of a relief when I was finally done. (I'm normally a quick reader, and it took me three weeks to get through it.)

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan ****

I know, I haven't posted anything here for a long time. That's mostly because I got away from reading for a while, and didn't have anything to report. I'm back at it, though, and on a mission to find the next great book.

One thing I'm going to change, though, is all the links to Amazon.ca and Amazon.com. I figure that if you're here, you must be somewhat intelligent and computer savvy, so you can track them down on your own.

So... Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. Good book.

In 1946, Laura McAllan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer's wife when her husband, Henry, buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. Her days become easier after Florence, the wife of Hap Jackson, one of their black tenants, becomes more important to Laura as companion than as hired help. Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry's brother, Jamie, and the Jacksons' son, Ronsel, arrive, both battling nightmares from horrors they've seen, and both unable to bow to Mississippi rules after eye-opening years in Europe. Jordan convincingly inhabits each of her narrators, though some descriptive passages can be overly florid, and the denouement is a bit maudlin. But these are minor blemishes on a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism. (Mar.)

I liked it. It wasn't a book that kept me up at night, but it was a well-written, enjoyable story. I rooted for some of the characters and hated some of the others. I know you're supposed to hate the father-in-law, but I also found myself oozing with serious dislike for the husband. Who does that to a woman? Buy a farm and inform the wifey she's giving up everything she knows to live in horrid conditions and tolerate her jackass of a father-in-law It made me happy that I was born in modern day times.

One point, though: I almost wish the author had written a book to focus more on Jamie and Ronsel. I'd have liked to read more about their stories.

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay ****

Sarah's Key: A Novel

Description:

De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.

This book is really two stories in one. The first story is about a young Jewish girl (Sarah) in Paris whose family was killed during the WWII. It gives a fictional but very disturbing account of how Sarah and her family are rounded up, left for days to wonder and worry and then separated and shipped off individually to be killed in the gas chambers. This part of the book is horrifying and disturbing. I hated every page of it, because it upset me so much; but that was the author's intension, no doubt; and very well done. (So well done that I had to set the book aside for a few days to take a break, and read something completely different.)

The second storyline in the book is about a journalist who discovers Sarah's story 60 years later, and how she's affected. This part of the book doesn't hit home nearly as much. I could probably have taken or left it; but I suspect that the author used the journalist, her research and her reactions to deliver Sarah's story so that she could break it up and make it easier to take. Otherwise, I think the book would have been too upsetting for most to read.

I'm torn on this one. It was a well written book on a subject about which we should all be more aware. However, I can honestly say that I didn't like it. Not because of the writing style, or character representation: I didn't like it because I don't like to read about others' suffering. I don't know how anybody could not be horribly disturbed while reading this book. Job well done on that front by the author... I just think of books like this as more of an obligation than entertainment.

Free to a Good Home, by Eve Marie Mont ****

Free To A Good Home

Description:

Noelle Ryan works as a veterinary technician at a New England animal shelter, helping pets find homes. If only it were as easy to find one for herself. After discovering she can't have children-and watching her marriage fall apart after a shocking revelation by her husband-she feels as sad and lost as the strays she rescues.

She can't seem to get over her ex, Jay. Unfortunately, all Jay wants from her is a huge favor: serving as caretaker for his elderly mother, who blames Noelle for the breakup. While Jay heads off to Atlanta to live the life of a bachelor, Noelle is left only with her Great Dane, Zeke, to comfort her. But when a carefree musician named Jasper tugs at her heartstrings, giving her a second chance at life- and at love- Noelle comes to realize that home is truly where the heart is.

OK, let's be honest here: This book is fluff with very little substance. I bought it because the photographer who did the cover shot has a blog that I love, and the dog in the picture is hers. (I can't post a link to Erin Vey's blog right now because it's been infected with malware - but you should really Google her or look her up on Facebook.) I wasn't in any sort of hurry to read it until I started reading Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay. That book was so heavy and disturbing that I had to take a break and went looking for something a lot lighter... this was the perfect contrast, and I breezed through it in a night.

For some reason this book had the same appeal to me as Twilight did (except for the lack of vampires, condescending hero and twit of a heroine); so if you liked Twilight, I think you'll like this one too. Suffice to say, it's a sweet love story. He treats her well. She's got a brain in her head. They both make mistakes, which they work through; and then they fall in love.

If only it were that easy in real life.