Finished: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Haddon) Another book that was hard to put down...a story told from the viewpoint of an autistic, highly intelligent, British teenage boy. I can't decide if it was more heartbreaking or uplifting by the end. The story opens with Christopher out walking at night and he comes across the neighbor, Mrs. Shears' dog that has been run through with a garden pitchfork and killed. :-( Christopher loved the dog and he picks it up to carry it into Mrs. Shears' house when she comes out screaming, accusing him of killing her dog. The story ensues, the police come, and not realizing Christopher is autistic and can't be touched by strangers, they try to grab his arm. Christopher hits a police officer and is taken into the station. His father comes to get him and explains Christopher's extraordinary circumstances to the police chief, who lets Christopher off with a warning. From that point on, Christopher is determined to logically figure out who killed the dog. At his special school his teacher encourages him to write a book by writing down all of his activities. That book becomes the book that the reader is reading, and it's pretty fascinating. I don't know if the author has experience with autism or Christopher's mind is just how he would imagine a mathematically superior, yet socially inept, autistic child to be. Whatever the case....reading the book through Christopher's voice is mesmerizing. Christopher has been told by his father that his mother died two years before, when in reality, the mother couldn't handle the stress of raising Christopher any more and she had left home with Mr. Shears, the husband of the neighbor whose dog was killed! The mother was far less patient with Christopher than the father and she figured there would be less fighting and more normalcy for Christopher if she didn't live there. She has, however, written him letters every week for two years which the father has unopened and kept from Christopher. One day Christopher stumbles across the letters and after reading a few comes to the horrifying conclusion that his mother is actually alive and his father's been lying to him all this time. :-( Christopher goes into a bit of a trance, and when the father gets home, he is so terribly sorry and promises he'll never lie to Christopher again. As a matter of fact...he will be completely truthful starting now...HE'S the one who killed Mrs. Shears' dog. :-( :-( Mrs. Shears had begun to come over and take care of Christopher and his father for awhile after the two spouses left, and Christopher's father had begun to think maybe she'd come to stay. Mrs. Shears didn't have that in mind and one night after arguing at her house, the father left through the front door in anger and the dog was there and growling at him. He realized he could just keep walking, but instead he killed the dog. This horrified Christopher almost more than realizing that his father had lied to him about his mother. All that Christopher formulates in his head is to be afraid that his father is going to kill him too. So...Christopher runs away the next day and heads to the address on the last letter from his mother in London. The train and "tube" rides are harrowing for the poor guy, but he finally makes it to his mother. She's very happy to see him and has no idea that Christopher thought she was dead. Of course, Mr. Shears isn't so happy to see him. The mother ends up leaving Mr. Shears and taking Christopher back to his hometown, but Christopher still wants nothing to do with his father. The father doesn't give up though and brings a timer with him one day when he meets Christopher and tells him that they'll set the timer for a minute at a time and he hopes that he can earn back Christopher's trust a minute at a time. This logical approach seems to work...and... the fact that the father buys Christopher a puppy to name and take care of. In the end, Christopher actually passes his Level A Math exams, which is apparently a huge deal...and he's gradually spending more time with his father, taking care of his dog, and seeing his mother who now lives nearby, equally as much. Like I said...I can't decide whether it was more heartbreaking or uplifting because it was just a small fraction of time spent with this boy and his family in a long, long lifetime that they will all be living with his autism, while helping him carve out as normal a life as possible.

Finished: Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys) This one mesmerized me and I just couldn't put it down...the story of Mr. Rochester's insane wife...before she was insane, and his wife. You know...Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre?? It's not that it was one of my favorite books, by far, but the premise and the writing both lulled me into reading until I was done! The story is all about Atoninette's tragic childhood on a Carribean island with a mentally disturbed mother, left in poverty with her two children after her first husband, a crazy slave-owner dies. The islanders hate Antoinette, her mother and her sickly brother and won't help them at all. Then, another rich Englishman comes and marries Antoinette's mother and saves them from poverty. He actually cares for her children as well! However, the islanders hate them even more now that they've gone from poor "white niggers" back to being rich again. The islanders, in a fit of rage, burn down their huge house. The poor sickly brother is killed by the fire and Antoinette's mother, who never really seems to care as much for Antoinette as she did for her brother, goes off the deep end. Her stepfather, Mr. Mason, however, keeps taking care of Antoinette into her late teens, and until he dies. Upon his death, he splits his fortune with his own son, Richard, and Antoinette. Richard Mason is not nearly as good a person as his father. At his first opportunity, he accepts 30,000 pounds for his step-sister as he marries her off to a prominent young Englishman who has been sent to carry out this business of marrying and acquiring the island girl's immense properties by his own father. That young Englishman is our Mr. Rochester!! He arrives on the island and is sick with fever for three weeks and then rushed into marriage by Richard within the next week. Mr. Rochester can never get used to the differences in the climate, natural surroundings, and seeming hatred that emanates from most of the native people towards him. He does, however, grow to enjoy his wife's company for a few weeks and she falls in love with him. He can never truly say that he loves her, but he's getting used to the place when he gets a mysterious letter telling him all about the history of mental illness in the girl's family...and the horrid fact that her father and grandfather before him were slave owners. This puts him off towards Antoinette and he basically shuns her within their home. And being put off by Mr. Rochester, in turn, breaks Antoinette's heart and she does, in fact, go rather mad. Mr. Rochester does finally take her to England and lock her in the top floor room of his mansion after his own father and eldest brother die and he inherits everything. The last pages of the book reflect back to the pages of Jane Eyre where the crazy, locked-up wife steals the keys and goes wandering through the house. It's very "eyrie", lol. ok, that was dumb. Anyway...it's so sad to see that Antoinette was really a product of her genes and mostly her troubled environment growing up. She always loved her island, though, and if she had been left alone and not made to marry, probably would have eventually met someone she could have truly loved and vice versa. Such an interesting take on these characters! :-)

Finished: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Spark) Well, that was a quick read! A pretty good book about an unconventional girl's prep school teacher in 1930's Edinburgh. Miss Brodie has the girls for the "middle years" from the time they're 10 to 12-13, before they move on the upper school. She handpicks six girls to be her creme de la creme...the "Brodie Set", and they remain close to Miss Brodie all the way through their teen years as well. Miss Brodie believes not in stuffing their heads with all the traditional schooling subjects, like grammar, history and math...but instead believes in enlightening them with the arts, her own traveling, life and love experiences. She believes that education should be a bringing out of their own natural characters and talents as opposed to a "stuffing in" of all that other stuff. Her traveling includes usually going to Italy for summer break. She then comes home and gushes about Mussolini and Fascism to the girls. Of course, the head mistress and the other faculty frown upon her ways and are constantly looking for ways to force her to retire. The headmistress is constantly calling the Brodie Set in for tea to trick them into spilling some detail about Miss Brodie that would get her in trouble. The girls are savvy, though, and extremely loyal. Miss Brodie and the girls also spend alot of time together outside of school, going to museums, and even to her own house. That would never be OK in this day and age. The Brodie Set are: Monica, the smart one with sausagey legs who is good at math; Rose, the sexual one; Eunice, the athlete; Mary, the dumb one who always gets blamed for any mistakes; Jenny, the prettiest one and Sandy's best friend; and Sandy, the insightful and imaginative one, and Jenny's best friend. The two of them write a romantic journal about Miss Brodie and her love life, including her deceased former fiance. As young teens, the girls begin to visit the house of the music teacher with her when Miss Brodie starts dating him. I'm not sure how appropriate that is either, but that part is all innocent. However, Miss Brodie is really in love with the art teacher (and he with her) who is married with children. When the girls start visiting the art teacher and his family to pose for his portraits, that's when things become a little less appropriate. Miss Brodie encourages Rose, who she thinks is most sexually provocative, to have an affair with the art teacher when she's seventeen so Miss Brodie can live vicariously through the affair. Miss Brodie confides her plan to Sandy who always goes on the portrait sittings with Rose. However, it ends up being Sandy who has the affair with the art teacher. Miss Brodie is disappointed because she thought Sandy would make more of herself. There is also an incident where Miss Brodie encourages a sixteen year old girl, Emily Joyce, who is already prone to running away and being wild, to run away and fight for Italy. The young girl is killed in an attack on the train ride over. The year after the girls have moved on from upper school, one of them finally betrays Miss Brodie to the headmistress and she is forced to retire early. By 1946 Miss Brodie has succumbed to a disease, "something growing inside her". She dies never knowing who betrayed her, but only that she was told it was one of the Brodie Set. We find out that Sandy finally realized that Miss Brodie should not be influencing other young girls after encouraging her sexual plan with the art teacher, and after encouraging Emily Joyce to run away. However, instead of getting herself in trouble as well by telling of the affair, she tells the headmistress that she should try to remove Miss Brodie not on the grounds of her private life, but on the grounds of her political beliefs..."she is a fascist, after all". That ends up being enough for the headmistress. As for the girls, Sandy writes a much touted psychology book and then becomes a nun! Jenny goes on to become an actress. Mary becomes a shorthand typist, but then dies in a hotel fire. Eunice becomes a nurse, and Monica a scientist. Rose, the sexual one, ends up marrying a business man and having a family. It turns out, even though the boys in school always talked about having sex with Rose, none of them ever did and Rose did not have sex with any of the boys in school! Talk about preconceived notions and undeserved labels! This book was on two Top 100 lists, Time's and the Modern Library's, but I'm not really sure it belonged there. I wasn't super impressed by it, but it was pretty good....but very short...only 137 pages. In any event, it's checked off my list now. :-)

Finished: Howards End (Forster) A good book about two British sisters, young women raising their teenage brother, who are thrown into the orbit of the prominent Wilcox family, and all that ensues. Margaret, the oldest at 29, and 21 year old Helen, first come across Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox, parents to three grown children, while on holiday where Mrs. Wilcox promptly invites the young women to visit their summer home outside of London, Howards End. Margaret stays home with their brother, Tibby, while Helen goes and within three days falls in love with their youngest son, Paul and he with her. They declare themselves engaged, but upon seeing that Paul is reluctant and embarrassed to tell his parents, Helen calls the whole affair off and heads home. Helen gets over her broken heart, but Margaret becomes worried when the Wilcox family, minus Paul who has gone to oversee his father's interests in India, moves into a flat across the street from their family home, left to them by their parents. Helen takes her own holiday with a cousin in Germany which leaves Margaret there to interact with the Wilcox's. Mrs. Wilcox takes a particular liking to Margaret and they develop a fast friendship before Mrs. Wilcox's health declines and she passes away. Shortly before her death, Mrs. Wilcox writes a note asking to leave Howards End to Margaret! Mrs. Wilcox had seen in Margaret a kindred spirit who would appreciate the nature of the summer home's surroundings and believe in the spirit of the home. She feels her own husband and children see it as simply a possession and have merely tolerated their trips out there each summer. Needless to say, when Mr. Wilcox, his oldest son, Charles, his greedy wife, Dotty, and the Wilcox's daughter, Evie, see the note, they are appalled! Together they justify to themselves that mother wasn't in her right mind and they burn the note! They all feel for sure that Margaret must have scammed their wife and mother. However, when a couple of years pass and Margaret never mentions it, they realize she had no idea. And, in other developments, Margaret and Mr. Wilcox slowly grow to care for each other and end up married! There are a few twists and turns...and lots off talk about the upper classes versus the lower classes...and men keeping women in their place (though Margaret is very feisty and independent and not the "typical" quiet woman of those times.) A falling out between the very close sisters comes to a head towards the end of the book and the sisters finally reconcile and Margaret ends up inheriting Howards End after all. Another good Forster book, though I think I liked A Passage to India better! :-)

Finished: The Hypnotist's Love Story (Moriarty) Another page-turner by this Australian writer...though not quite as page-turnery as the last one. :-) Still, a good read for doing my walking on the treadmill! So, basically the story is about thirty-something hypnotherapist, Ellen, who lives in her grandparents' old house by the sea, and runs her hypnotherapy business from the house. She's got a variety of patients she helps through hypnotherapy...one young woman who is trying to quit smoking before her wedding, one young woman with inexplicable leg pain, one young man terrified to speak in front of people, etc. etc. When Ellen finally meets (through a dating service) a man she's falling for, Patrick, also thirty-something, surveyor, widowed, and father of 8-year old Jack, she can't believe how quickly they begin to fall in love. There's just one catch....Patrick has a stalker...his ex-girlfriend, Saskia, who lived with Patrick and Jack from the time Jack was two to five. Jack's mother Colleen had died when Jack was just a baby and so Saskia was like a mother to Jack. When Patrick had broken up with Saskia one day rather abruptly, Saskia never got over the loss of Patrick OR Jack. So, for the last three years she's been stalking Patrick...writing him, texting him, following him on dates, showing up at his house, showing up at Jack's soccer games, etc. She's completely obsessed because she's still so in love with what they had as a family. The page-turning part is when you realize that Saskia is actually one of Ellen's patients and you have to try and figure out which one! The Saskia stumbling block, plus the fact that Patrick doesn't truly seem to be over the beloved Colleen's death, provide for some tensions in Ellen and Patrick's relationship. Even when Patrick proposes, the moment is ruined by Saskia who shows up! Anyway, Ellen actually feels empathy for Saskia. Ellen becomes pregnant and Patrick becomes more and more worried about Saskia's behavior. It all culminates one night when Saskia sneaks into their house and stands over Patrick and Ellen's bed as they sleep. Patrick wakes up startled and as Saskia begins to run out of the room, she runs smack dab into little Jack who has heard the commotion and they tumble down the stairs. :-( Jack suffers only a broken arm, but Saskia suffers a broken ankle and pelvis. Patrick finally takes out a restraining order and he and Ellen finally discuss his deep feelings for all things Colleen and Saskia. Patrick genuinely loves Ellen, it turns out, so they end up being ok. Their baby, Grace, is born and the family of four begins a happy and mostly sane life. Saskia finds out during her hospital stay that she actually has not alienated all her friends. She's got a couple who come to see her every day and she finally begins to see her own self-worth. Her court mandated therapy sessions follow and she finally works out her complicated feelings towards Patrick and Jack. Finally, after a year's time, she is also moving on with her life and tentatively happy in her new and old friends, and mostly in her own self-awareness. A good book! I will probably read more of Moriarty's books. :-)

Finished: World Without End (Follett) Finally I read the 1000-plus page sequel to Pillars of the Earth and it was a really great book! :-) I couldn't possible write a recap of the book that spans 34 years in the lives of its many characters, but I can just list a few memorable things. Of course, the town of Kingsbridge with the cathedral built 200 years earlier by Tom Builder and his stepson, Jack, is a character all its own. The town is still thriving and the cathedral still busy with its active monastery that we so lovingly remember being run by Prior Phillip in Pillars. Now, in 1327, though, we still have just as many unsavory characters constantly manipulating circumstances for their own greed and making the lives of the more upstanding citizens an uphill battle! Another major character in the book...the bubonic plague which struck Europe in the 1300's. It is prevalent throughout the book and drives much of the story and reveals the true moral character of many of the people. The unsavory and, for the most part, despicable characters include: Joby of Wigleigh, the poor peasant man who sells his own teenage daughter for a cow, knowing she's going to be used by the horrible new owner as a prostitute for the outlaws running rampant in the forest; Prior Godwyn, the Prior at Kingsbridge Cathedral who is so out for his own glorification and advancement that he nearly has his own cousin hanged for witchcraft because she threatens his advancement...and who is so cowardly that when the plague strikes the town and all the nuns rally around to help the sick, Godwyn packs up all the monks AND all their treasures and charters and runs away to another town; Sub-prior Philemon, a thief since childhood, and a devious-minded man who comes up with most of the ideas that Godwyn implements; Ralph, a heartless young boy who purposely shoots an arrow through the heart of his friend's dog, who grows up to be an equally heartless Lord and then Earl who rapes, murders, and takes what he wants all his life until he's finally killed by his own son, who thankfully doesn't know he's Ralph's own son, while defending his mother who Ralph is about to force himself on yet again; Elfric, the builder who apprentices Merthin, the young boy with a knack for wood carving and design, who refuses to marry Elfric's daughter when he comes of age, infuriating Elfric and causing Elfric to keep Merthin out of the builder's guild for nearly the rest of his life; and Petranilla, Godwyn's mother who plants the seeds of ambition in Godwyn's head and is always there with cold-blooded advice about how Godwyn should get the better of his enemies no matter the cost. Whew! That's so many bad guys. There are even more, but too many to list. Now, on to the good guys and heroes and heroines: First there is Merthin...or I should say...first, there are Merthin and Caris. They meet as 11 year-olds and love each other for the rest of their lives! Merthin is the red-headed, one year older brother of the vicious Ralph. Merthin is not as good looking or charming as Ralph, but he is sensible and well-liked. He's devastated when he is sent to be a building apprentice while Ralph is sent to learn to be a knight...yet Merthin ends up being the great designer of the new bridge after it collapses, as well as a new tower for the cathedral, and several homes and buildings in Kingsbridge. He eventually becomes the alderman of the town in his later years and is highly loved and respected by all! He's also the direct descendant of the red-headed Jack Builder from Pillars. :-) Caris, though she loves Merthin all her life, doesn't believe that women must lead a conventional life of marrying and having children and being supported by men. She wants to be independent and make her own way, but at the same time she loves Merthin. She's very conflicted. She takes charge when the bridge collapses and is a natural organizer. She's also interested in learning the art of healing and becomes instrumental in handling the plague by implementing linen masks and the washing of hands. She has an uphill battle always, though, and on the morning that she is to marry Merthin (she finally said yes!), she is accused by the jealous Prior Godwyn (her own cousin!!) of heresy and about to be sentenced as a witch! The only saving grace is the Mother Prioress Cecilia who takes Caris in as a nun. The bishop agrees to this sentence saying she can never leave the church, though, or she will be hanged as her original sentence declares. Poor Caris and Merthin. :-( Anyway, Caris accepts her fate and won't even say goodbye to Merthin. Broken-hearted Merthin goes to study the architecture in Florence and comes back 10 years later. It is after that that the plague hits. As a matter of fact, it has already hit in Florence and killed Merthin's wife and in laws. Only Merthin, who miraculously survives the plague, and his young daughter, Lolla, are unaffected. ok, I'm starting to recap, lol. Let's see...other good people: Sir Thomas Langley is a knight at the beginning of the book that the 11 year old Merthin witnesses with a secret parchment. The knight shows him where he buries the parchment and tells Merthin if he tells anyone about it, they will both die. He also tells Merthin to dig it up from the secret spot and give it to a priest if he ever dies. Then, Thomas goes to seek sanctuary as a monk at Kingsbridge; Wulfric, the poor peasant boy who, at 16, looses his mother, father and older brother in the bridge collapse. He also happens to stand up to the nasty Ralph when Ralph gropes his then fiancee. Ralph never forgets it and makes Wulfric's life a living hell for the rest of his life...stripping him of his father's lands, blackmailing Wulfric's wife into having sex, nearly hanging Wulfric's son, etc.; Gwenda, Wulfric's wife and the poor peasant girl who was sold by her father for the cow. Gwenda is one tough lady and kills one outlaw to escape that fate and drowns the man that bought her when the bridge collapses! She's in love with Wulfric all her life and patiently helps him with his crops for years while he's in love with another woman until Wulfric realizes that he loves Gwenda after all. Of course, Gwenda is the one who Ralph forces to have sex and the one whose firstborn son is really Ralph's and not Wulfric's. Other characters that were good people: Caris' father, Edmund Wooler, the Prioress, Mother Cecilia, Madge and Mark Webber, the poor weaving family who Caris shows how to make the expensive red dye that becomes known as Kingsbridge Scarlett. They become wealthy off of the endeavor, but then Mark and their four children all perish from the plague. :-( Madge remains resilient, though, and years later remarries, has one more child, and becomes an important member of the town guild. There's so much more I could say, but it was over a thousand pages, lol. I will just say that through all the political, religious, and plague hardships, the town does prevail and thrive again. And, after years of unselfish service, Caris is eventually released from her vows and gets to marry Merthin and open her own hospital for the town. And, Merthin finally builds a new tower for the cathedral that is taller than any other tower in Europe! As for the bad guys....Ralph is finally run through with his own kind of violence, a sword and a dagger, by Gwenda's son protecting his mother. Godwyn succumbs to the plague after all...even though he ran from it...apparently one of the monks already had it and it wiped them all out. Gwenda finally stood up to Joby with a burning piece of wood and marred his face and subdued his maliciousness. Petranilla and Elfric both perished from the plague. And, Phillemon was finally outwitted, denied the advancement he so deviously sought after Godwyn died, and sent to a position far, far away. Oh...and the secret in the parchment? It's all about the murder of King Edward II by his wife, Queen Isabella so that her son Edward III can become king. If found, it would change everything! :-) I've had this book for so many years and just now got around to reading it. Pillars was a favorite of mine, and I don't know that this one quite lived up to that, but I did enjoy reading it. And...I hear Follett's writing another Kingsbridge book to be published in 2017! :-)

Finished: Under the Net (Murdoch). This was one of those books that has to settle with me a bit, but I think it will be one that I am glad I read. It has a few little gems like this running through it's protagonist's head: The quenching of thirst is so exquisite a pleasure that it is a scandal that no amount of ingenuity can prolong it. It is really not about anything much but struggling, British writer, Jake Donoghue...his loves, his adventures, his misadventures, and basically his growing up. He pretty much lives rent free off his friends while putting off his own writing, while he earns what little money he does translating other author's works from French to English. He has a best friend, Finn, and another friend, Dave, who he interacts with mostly. The current woman in his life throws him out of her flat in the first pages of the story...but that's ok with him because they weren't even in a relationship, though she would have liked it. In his comings and goings he comes across a bookie, Sammy...and a left-wing politician, Lefty...a wise shop owner, Mrs. Tinckham...and an awesome former animal actor, an Alsatian dog (basically a German Shepherd) named Mars. He "rescues" Mars from Sammy the bookie..more like kidnaps him...but he gets him into a better situation and ends up keeping the dog in the end, so that's a nice part of the story. Jake also runs into the former love of his life, Anna, who he would like to start back up with again, but she is evasive and tells him to go to her sister, the beautiful actress, Sadie, for a place to live. Sadie always loved Jake, but Jake always loved Anna. Now, Sadie is being pursued by one of Jake's old friends, Hugo. But, Jake has lost touch with Hugo and never realized that Anna had actually fallen in love with Hugo while Hugo was in love with Sadie. It's all a bit convoluted, but mostly...it's all about Jake's introspection. We hear all of Jake's thoughts and motivations in this short book and it's rather interesting. :-)

Jake's dreamy reminiscence of Paris was one passage I really liked:

     Arriving in Paris always causes me pain, even when I have been away for only a short while. It is a city which I never fail to approach with expectation and leave with disappointment. There is a question which only I can ask and which only Paris can answer; but this question is something which I have never yet been able to formulate.

This was my second Iris Murdoch book and I may be interested in putting another one on the list! 

Finished: Hiding in the Spotlight (Dawson) Book Club Book # 9...a pretty good book. The material, a true story, was tragic and fascinating, and better than the actual writing in the book, if that makes sense. Two young Jewish sisters, Zhanna and Frina, piano prodigies in Ukraine in 1942, are marched towards their deaths, along with their mother, father and grandparents. They are to be mercilessly shot down by the Nazis and shoved into the man-made ditch known as Drobitsky Yar. Their father pulls out his only worthy possession, a pocket watch, and bribes an officer to let his oldest daughter, Zhanna, run from the march. He knows that Zhanna will survive the run into the forrest, and he tells her as he wraps his big coat around her, to live no matter what. Heartbroken, teenage Zhanna runs, her only possession...her copy of Chopin's piano sheet music Fantasie Impromptu, which she had mastered as a young girl. Through the obvious trials and tribulations of trying to avoid the Nazis, find shelter and food, and through the extreme kindness of strangers who would have been killed for helping her, Zhanna makes her way back to her hometown, where miraculously her sister turns up alive as well. Frina, though, will never speak of the march or tell her exactly how she too escaped. Again, with the kindness of strangers, the girls are told the only way for them to hope to survive is to pretend to be non-Jewish Russian refugees, change their names and get official papers with those names. To do so, they must go to an orphanage and tell their made-up story, that their father was a Russian soldier killed in the war and their mother a war victim as well. They manage to change their names, which they use for years...and they manage to play whatever piano is available until one day they are heard by German officers who insist they play for them at various concerts! Eventually they are made part of a troupe that is used to entertain the German soldiers who are now occupying their city. Sadly, though, when the war is finally over, the girls are still not free. The Germans force the entire troupe to retreat with them to Berlin where they are kept in pretty deplorable conditions. It's not until the treaty of Yalta is signed that the girls are discovered in a camp by an American solider, Larry Dawson, who is mesmerized by their talent. The girls already know that they cannot go back to Russia, much as Zhanna longs to, because Stalin is executing all returning Russian who were taken prisoner by the Germans. He irrationally blames them for being captured, even turning a blind eye to his own son who was captured in the war. Isn't that awful? Anyway...Larry makes it his mission to get the girls to America. It means he and his wife will have to adopt them. His wife is at home with their two very young boys. Larry makes the arrangements and gets his brother David, a talented musician who seventeen years earlier entered Julliard at the age of 13, involved as well. Larry is convinced that he can get the girls an audition to Julliard when he gets home and the rest will be history. And, well...that's kind of how it goes! Oh, and Zhanna, who is 19 by the time she meets David and auditions for Julliard, ends up falling in love with David and they get married and have two sons...one of them the author, Greg Dawson. Both Zhanna and David end up teaching music on the college level and playing in various orchestras. Frina has the near same story, though the focus of this book was on the author's mother, Zhanna. Frina also becomes an accomplished performer and marries and has children. It's a happy ending to a very traumatic life for these two young survivors of the horrific Jewish extinction of World War II.

Finished: Big Little Lies (Moriarty). A page-turner about a bunch of mums (including the "blonde bobs", as the go-getter, bob hair-cutted pta moms are called, lol) at an Australian school whose children are about to begin kindergarten. When the daughter of the top dog mum at the school, Renata, reluctantly points out the son of the new-to-the area mum, Jane, as the child who bullied her on orientation day, then sides are quickly drawn with one group of moms on one side and the larger, richer, go-gettier group of moms on the other. As the "outsiders", Madeline, Celeste and Jane form a close friendship, but each has their own troubles. Celeste, the beautiful, rich mother of twins boys who everyone envies, is secretly in a physically abusive relationship with her husband, Perry. Madeline is happy in her second marriage, but having trouble with her 14 year old daughter who she raised as a single mom when her husband up and left them, unable to handle the responsibilities of being a new dad. Said first husband is now in the picture with his new, younger wife and their kindergarten daughter is about to start school with all the rest of them, and now he's a hands on dad. Jane, a single mom, has never told Ziggy who her father is because he was a product of a one-night stand gone bad...not a rape, but a sexual experience that turned rough. The other group of go-getter moms become laser focused on getting Ziggy kicked out of the school because Renata's daughter, Amabelle (yes, with an "m" not an "n") singled him out. Amabelle is a sweet little girl who is too frightened of the real bully to tell the truth, and Ziggy actually befriends Amabelle and, though he is relentlessly persecuted by this group of adults, he doesn't tell his own mother who the real bully is. We do find out in the end, but it almost becomes secondary as the violence of Celeste's marriage comes to a head at the school parent trivia night and someone ends up dead. The whole book flashes back to let us in a piece at a time on who is murdered and whodunnit. It's a nice little page-turner, perfect for my treadmill walking. :-) Oh, and as a nice bonus at the end, Renata actually, very humbly, apologizes to both Jane and Ziggy when she finds out who the real bully was.