The Woman Upstairs

What a strange book. It's definitely for those who love literature. Claire Messud is a New York Times best selling author and after reading this book, I can see why. It's literature. It's artistic. It's beautifully written and the vocabulary is amazing. It reads sort of like poetry at times (but readable and understandable!). It's a highly intelligent novel and Messud paints pictures with her words of not only things, but emotions and thoughts.

But it's a weird book. Over half-way through and I still didn't know where the book was headed. What the point was. Even what the plot was. Is that good or bad? Perhaps if I were a more introspective person I'd get it?

The book was told through what I'd call conversational narration. Nora Eldridge is a single 37-year-old 3rd grade teacher who describes herself as "the woman upstairs". This woman has tried to be all things to all people, getting approval by denying herself.  She thinks she's independent, but as she invests herself fully and completely in a friendship with the mom and dad of one of her classroom kids, she realizes the woman upstairs isn't actually a happy one.

I get the sense that the author is trying to be edgy in her view of women and their identities. But in the midst of trying to pull that off, her main character, Nora, just comes across as insecure. Overall, I'd put this novel in the camp of feminist literature.

If you are interested in reading this book, it's helpful to know what it's about. Read some reviews and see what literature buffs think the book is about. Because even after finishing it, I still feel like I need to go read reviews to see what it was really about.

And The Mountains Echoed

I really loved Hosseini's other novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I have anticipated reading this one for a while. I was disappointed with the book. It definitely is not as good as his other ones.

It was slow. It caught me a little shy of 50 pages, which in general is my sweet spot. If I don't like a book within the first 50 pages, usually I don't like it after I finish drudging my way through it and I feel like I've wasted my precious reading time on a bad book. So, I give books 50 pages. And The Mountains Echoed got interesting for me around page 47.

I loved the opening chapters. Hosseini opened by telling a story and I love how that story ended up relating to the real life of the characters. This novel is not compelling. I didn't ever feel like I needed to keep reading to find out what happens because I don't think that's the point of the novel. It's about the characters, not about a dramatic plot.

At first I thought the book and the narration was all over the place. The author tells the story of the characters through different time periods and different narrators that change every chapter, which left me confused and playing catch up for half the chapter before finally understanding how it all relates. It took work when he brought in new characters to figure out who they were and how they related to the story of the main characters.

But as I continued to read, the authors back and forth between time and characters was interesting and got easier to follow. The "I wonder what happened to her?" got answered just when you thought she was out of the book.

While it is slow and requires concentration, while it is not compelling, and it took me longer than most novels to read, it's a well written book. Just keep low expectations going in and know it's more about characters than story lines and riveting plots.

Where We Belong

I know, I know. Emily Giffin. My perception of her has always been that she's the John Grisham for women. The Max Lucado for Christians. When a book is popular, it's probably a good book. When an author is popular, she's probably written too many books and they are all mediocre. Or she has a really good marketing team. At least that's my book snob perception.

I have seen Emily Giffin books in Target every time I'm there. Front and center. The books never appealed to me since there seemed to be a new one every 6 months, which in my mind meant they were probably poorly written.

I saw this book at a friend's house and decided to borrow it. I respect this friend's opinion regarding books and she said it was alright. Not great, but not bad.

And she was right. It's a quick beach read. Nothing deep. Nothing superb. Nothing that will win her awards.  The characters were good. The story was fine. It was fluff at its finest.

Three Sisters

I enjoyed this book a lot. It's a story about three houses owned by three different women. There's a lot about marriage (and the importance of fighting for difficult ones), community, identity, loss, grief, parenthood, control issues, mental illness (and how denial can ravage a family), abuse, female friendships, perfectionism, and so much more. And while that's a lot to put into a book, Susan Mallery did them justice.

There's really only one complaint I have: it's rated R for some sex scenes. I prefer innuendos rather than details. I don't care to hear about someone else's sex life, thank you very much. And this book in particular was too provocative for someone who prefers innuendos.

One of my favorite things about this book is the psychology in the book. I'm a psych major, so I love it when novels have some psychology in them that isn't quacky. I love how Mallery wrote about the three women and how their houses reflected their personalities and issues. One house was perfect. That owner struggled with perfection and looking all put together. Another woman was really artsy, so her house was artistic. And the last woman was a mess and a work in progress due to being left at the altar. Her house was under construction and a mess all throughout the book.

This would make a great book club book as there are lots of issues and things to discuss.

Six Years

There's not much to say about this book. It's a quick beach read, but for men, too. There's nothing deep or compelling. Just a good story.

Here's the plot:

Jake and Natalie meet during one summer and fall deeply in love. She abruptly ends the relationship and gets married to another man, Todd. She tells Jake to leave them alone and not try to contact them. He abides by her wishes for 6 years. Then Jake finds out that her husband died, so he goes to the funeral. Except when he sees the wife, it's not Natalie.

It's worth the read. Just don't expect much from it and you won't be disappointed. If you have high expectation, you'll be let down.

Maya's Notebook

The premise of this book sounded so interesting to me. A young woman moves to Chile to escape from her life of drugs, crime, and prostitution. While it sounded so interesting, so much of it wasn't about the plot, but the characters. And the characters just weren't that interesting. There wasn't much to keep me reading, so I put it down. As I started writing this current blog post, I read some reviews for Maya's Notebook and couldn't find a bad one in the bunch. People loved it. With all the praise for the novel, I decided to pick it back up where I left off and try to finish it.

It took me about 20 more pages to get into the book. On about page 70, it took off and I couldn't put it down. Still, I have mixed emotions about this book. There was too much detail about the Chilean landscape and people to hold my attention in some chapters. However, it's a great book on sociology. You get to study drug addict/dealer culture and Chilean culture.

It was also a little too risque for my taste. And not even the parts when she was on the streets and in prostitution. It was the part when she was hiding on a Chilean island and met a tourist that was too much. I actually thought that whole part took away from the book.

But overall, I like the message the book gives about sex. The sex in the book is not flippant and gave a message that it can be destructive. Outside of marriage or a committed relationship, it can become an idol to worship. The relationships get confusing and can lead to devastation.

And while I usually like books with interesting narration, I didn't like the format of this narration - through Maya writing in her notebook. She ended up giving information that I found boring and not helpful for the story. Just plain old tradition first person would have been better.

The writing about her time on the streets in Vegas was riveting. The author could have built anticipation better with the going back and forth though. At times, she could leave you with a cliff hanger while she went back to present day on the island, but all in all, it could have been done better and most of the time I didn't mind waiting to see what happened.

The ending was disappointing. Saw it coming halfway through the book. You know the bad guy will lose, although I did like the questions left behind about the how it happened.

Overall, a 6.5 out of 10. And while I wouldn't recommend it, I wouldn't say it was a waste of my time.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This book gets really mixed reviews. In some ways, I really liked it. But mostly, I didn't. I left feeling that while the book certainly had a point, I'm not exactly sure what it was. Perhaps the point is about bullying? Perhaps about being honest with one's self? Perhaps it's about quirky kids?

This book is a picture of youth - high school to be exact. A picture of mental illness. A picture of how abuse can affect a child, even when they don't think it does. It's a social commentary about kids on the fringe. Kids who are different whether it be someone who is smarter than most, gay, quirkier, or what have you. What I liked about the book, is it didn't give a right or wrong about the moral issue of homosexuality. It wasn't an opinion piece. It didn't have an agenda, which left the reader to think for themselves.

I pretty much didn't care for high school. That bias probably played into how I read the book and what I think about the characters. Most of the characters were actually endearing. I enjoyed reading about them through the eyes of Charlie, the 15-year-old narrator. It's the rated R details in the book that while important, are a little too graphic for me.

I leave you with my favorite quote from Bill, Charlie's teacher, as it relates to reading books..."be a filter not a sponge". Wise words!