Finished: Bring Me Back (Paris) Psychological thriller that I finished in a day because it was such a page-turner. :-) A young man, Finn, who has been dating his girlfriend, Layla, for a year, pulls over at a rest stop one night on their long drive back from a vacation. He gets out to use the restroom and leaves her sleeping in the car with the doors locked. When he comes back out, she's gone, nowhere to be found. Of course, he doesn't tell the police everything, like how she had just told him she had slept with someone else so he'd dragged her out of the car and raised his fist to her. He doesn't remember if he hit her, though, because the next thing he remembers is coming back out of the restroom. He has dealt with anger issues in the past and his father had told him to walk away from situations, so he doesn't know if that's what he did, or something worse. An intense search never turns up any sign of Layla. Twelve years later, Finn, though he grieved for months, leading into years, has moved on with his life. He's living with another woman and has just proposed to her. The woman is Layla's sister, Ellen! It turns out that five years after Layla's disappearance, Ellen travels to town for the ceremony to declare Layla officially dead, and meets Finn. It takes some time, but they begin to grow close, etc. etc. So, right after they announce their engagement in the paper, mysterious things start happening. Little Russian nesting dolls, something that Ellen and Layla had as children, begin showing up at odd times. Then, Finn starts getting emails that finally result in the person on the other end saying she is, in fact, Layla! Finn is beside himself and doesn't tell Ellen. Could it possibly be his beloved Layla is still alive? Ellen knows about the Russian Dolls and begins to think herself that Layla could be alive. She's both thrilled that her sister is possibly alive, and worried at the same time. Does that mean Finn would want to go back to the lively Layla instead of the dependable Ellen? I figured out very early in the book the big twist, so it was kind of interesting seeing the story unfold with that knowledge. It's along the lines of finding out that Bruce Willis is really dead in The Sixth Sense. There's not a ghost in this story, but there's just one of those "do your head" twists that makes you go back and reread things. :-) I guess I"ll just say ***SPOILER ALERT*** from this point on. If you'd like to read this book but don't want to know the big twist, then  you should stop reading immediately! okie doke? So, probably most people will also figure this out pretty early on, but Ellen is really Layla with a split personality. It ends up that her sister Ellen had been killed by their horribly abusive father as a teenager and her body buried. When Finn had raised his hand to Layla twelve years before, the abusive childhood reared its talons and grabbed hold of Layla. Even though it ends up Finn did not hit her, Layla didn't know what he might do when he returned from the restroom, so she caught a ride with a stranger and ran. She went back to her father, who by that time was nearly blind with diabetes, and assumed the identity of her sister Ellen, because believe it or not, the father actually tolerated Ellen more than he did Layla! After her father's death, Layla went to school to become a book illustrator and more and more kept Ellen's personality. When she went to the death declaration ceremony for Layla and Finn didn't even recognize her, she, Layla, made a promise to Ellen that she'd go away for good if Ellen could make Finn happy. However, Layla couldn't keep her promise when Finn actually proposed to Ellen. That's why Layla wanted back out to play and to claim Finn. As Finn becomes more and more frantic because rather than agreeing to meet with him, Layla's behavior and emails are escalating, demanding that Finn get rid of Ellen, Finn still doesn't let Ellen know what's going on. Of course, since Ellen and Layla are sharing the same body, Ellen already knows everything that Finn is not telling her. Neither of them seem to be able to control when the other comes out. When Layla kidnaps Ellen and their dog (or so Finn thinks), with the help of his friends, he finally figures out that she's taken Ellen to their old family home. When he gets there, and he only finds one person, who he thinks is Ellen, they struggle as he's trying to figure out what's going on and Ellen falls and hits her head. It's a fatal wound, but before she dies, she keeps muttering, "not Ellen but Layla". Once Finn is informed by his friends, who stayed behind to delve into more emails, that what he was dealing with was a split personality all along, Finn can't forgive himself for not recognizing Layla at the ceremony, and more so, for his fit of anger that began the whole nightmare. He doesn't fight the law when he's accused of manslaughter and prepares to go to jail and live in his own prison. The books is much more suspenseful than my mediocre recap!

Finished: Less (Greer) This year's Pulitzer Prize winner about a 49 year old gay man, Arthur Less, a fair to middlin' author who, heartbroken that his former lover of nine years is marrying someone else, decides to travel the world by accepting all kinds of invitations he's been offered...all but the one he can't bear to attend...his ex-lover, Freddy's wedding! I kept putting off reading this book, but am so glad I finally read it. We travel with Arthur as he goes on all these adventures, where, because it's Arthur Less, something almost always goes wrong! He's running from  his feelings, and from his publisher's rejection of his latest book, and in the process, he reminisces about his first love, Robert, all the loves in between, and his last love, the man he's still in love with, Freddy. There are so many passages in this book that I actually laughed out loud at that I was shocked. It's been a long time since a book has made me do that. And, so many passages I related to as well. Arthur is going to turn fifty while he's away on his trip, and his focus on that also brings out all kinds of self-examination. So, almost anything that could go wrong, does go wrong. Arthur is headed from San Francisco to New York to moderate a panel discussion on popular SciFi author H.H.H Mandern's recent book for his first stop. He comes to realize that they had to go pretty far down on a list of people they would want to moderate before he said yes. He never gets to moderate the panel, because H.H.H. Mandern comes down with food poisoning. Arthur next heads off to Mexico where he was invited to be part of an author's symposium, but it turns out that only he and the ex-wife of his first love, Robert, are to be on that panel. This being the wife who was scorned when Robert left her for Arthur!! As it turns out, she can't show up because she's broken her hip, so Arthur is left there on his own, battling the English/Spanish language barrier. Arthur's travels continue on in this manner, from Berlin, where he thinks he's speaking perfect German when he's up for an award, but where the reader sees what he's actually saying. It is pretty funny! And, then he goes on to Paris where he almost falls in love after his plane out of Paris is delayed and he attends a party of an old friend who never shows up. From Paris he goes to Morocco, where after riding a camel through the desert and nearly being smothered by a sandstorm, he winds up a ski chalet. On to Japan where he has agreed to offer his critique on authentic Japanese food to a magazine, even though he has never eaten Japanese food. And finally, to his last destination, a retreat in India where he is determined to rewrite his rejected book. All his travel experiences, his longing thoughts about Freddy, and his reminiscing about Robert do lend him a new insight on how the protagonist of his book should be changed. He has the entire book written at the retreat but the last chapter when he gets a call from home that Robert, who is now 70 years old to Arthur's 50 (he had his birthday on the Sahara), has had a stroke. Arthur decides to head home the next day since he remains good friends with Robert. Luckily, nothing goes wrong with his flights home, and as he wearily climbs the steps to his home, he sees that a light is on and someone is waiting for him. It's Freddy!!! It turns out, Freddy was married for one day and as he sobbed on the first day of his honeymoon in Tahiti, his husband told him that he needed to do what made him happy. It was clear that Freddy truly still loved Arthur. And, it turns out that Freddy was the narrator of the book all along. This is where the book ends, and for once, there seems to be a happy ending for Arthur Less! An uplifting ending, and a good book along the way. :-) Here are a couple of passages that I either related to or that made me laugh.

On Arthur playing baseball as a youngster, which he really had no interest in, but he played anyway. I just loved this:

His father had to remind his son's coach (who had recommended Less's removal) that it was a public athletic league and, like a public library, was open to all. Even the fumbling oafs among us. And his mother, a softball champ in her day, has had to pretend none of this matters to her at all and drives Less to games with a speech about sportsmanship that is more a dismantling of her own believes than a relief to the boy. Picture Less with his leather glove weighing down his left hand, sweating in the spring heat,  his mind lost in the reverie of his childhood lunacies--when an object appears in the sky. Acting almost on a species memory, he runs forward, the glove before him. The bright sun spangles his vision. And--thwack!! The crowd is screaming. He looks into the glove and sees, gloriously grass-bruised and double-stitched in red, the single catch of his life span.

On Arthur describing the tent he was set up in in the Sahara and the sounds surrounding him in the desert:

From the north: a camel bellowing to spite the dusk.
From the south: Lewis screaming that there is a scorpion in his bed.
From the west: the tinkle of flatware as the Bedouin set their dinner table.
From the south again: Lewis shouting not to worry, it was just a paper clip.
From the east: The British technology-whiz-cum-nightclub-owner saying: "Guys? I don't feel so great." 

omg, I just laughed out loud at Lewis, a friend of Arthur's who met him in Morocco for this part of the trip, lol.

And, on the description of a restaurant that Arthur goes to in Japan:

The restaurant sits on a rock above the river and is very old and water stained in way that would delight a painter and trouble a contractor....

Finished: The Wasp Factory (Banks) Probably the most disturbing book I've read to date, and I found Lord of the Flies very disturbing! I read reviews that Wasp Factory was very dark, yet it was also among the top 100 books to read on a British book list. Anywayyyyyy....it was very, very disturbing, and thankfully not too long. Frank is a 17 year old living on a remote Scottish island with just his eccentric father. He spends his time killing small animals, constantly building small pipe bombs, supplying his leftover WWII bunker on the island, or putting wasps through his "wasp factory". Frank narrates the story and lets us know that when he was 5, he killed his cousin, 10 year old Blythe, because his cousin set fire to his and older brother Eric's rabbit hutches, killing their pets. When Frank was 8, he killed his 5 year old brother, Paul, because even though he loved him and played with him all the time, he could see Paul becoming someone who would eventually crowd him out. Then, when he was 9 he killed his 4 or 5 year old cousin, Esmerelda, because he needed to even out the killing between boys and girls. He built a huge kite made of tarp, and had her put her hands through the nylon loops of the string, and let go of her off the windy Scottish coast. She was never seen again. His old brother Eric is gifted smart, but while in medical school, takes care of a baby who is basically a vegetable and Eric goes absolutely crazy one day when he lifts up the babies head to feed it and day old maggots have been eating the baby's brain. Eric goes back home where he, formerly so gentle, begins setting dogs on fire and shoving maggots at the local town children. He is committed to an asylum, but has just escaped at the time of the book. Frank has only one friend in town because he is so weird and because of his "disability". It ends up, when Frank was 3, his genitals were bitten off by the family bulldog, Saul, on the same day his little brother was born. His mother left the family, only coming back to give birth to Paul, who wasn't even his father's child. Then, she left Paul with Frank's father! One of the reasons Frank ended up killing Paul was he couldn't believe his father named him Paul, after going out and killing Saul for mauling Frank. Saul's old creepy skull is one of the things that Frank keeps in his bunker. He puts candles in it and consults it when he's got a problem and needs to figure out what to do. Frank's wasp factory is a huge old clock face that used to be on the outside of the Bank of Scotland. Frank has rigged up little tunnels that go from the round circle in the center to each of the twelve Roman numerals that indicate time. At the end of each tunnel, he's rigged a little door that will trap the wasp and each number has a different manner of death for the was, from fire, which he has to help with using a lighter, to being eaten by ants, to being drowned in urine, to being caught by a spider, to being shot with an air gun, etc. Frank also captures wasps to put in the wasp factory when he needs answers to things. The main thing he needs answered right now is what is Eric going to do? Is he coming back to the island? Should he embrace his brother or be very afraid? Frank has spent his life as a eunuch, never able to achieve puberty, and he knows every inch of the island. He would love to have his older brother back, but knows he's lost him to his mental illness. At the climax of the book, Eric does come back and try to blow up his old house, first setting fire to all the sheep on his way. Needless to say, the latest wasp had "chosen" death by fire, so it's just creepy. Meanwhile, Frank has finally been able to get into his father's study, which has remained locked his whole life. In the study, he finds a specimen jar with a tiny set of male genitalia floating in it. :-( He also finds a box of tampons and vials of male hormones!! Frank freaks out and confronts his father and discovers that he's not a boy at all, but a girl. He was, in fact, bitten by the bulldog, but it just left a little bit of scaring. His father has been feeding him male hormones all his life, keeping him home for homeschooling, etc. because he didn't want the influence of another rotten female in his life! He even constructed a fake set of tiny male genitalia to put in the jar in case Frank ever began to question things. And the tampons were in case Frank's body ever rejected the male hormones.  omg, it's awful! The next morning, Frank goes for one of his long walks out to the dunes. He contemplates his life and how part of him always thought he took those three young lives because he knew they would grow up and have things he'd never have. They'd grow up to be normal. If he'd not been tampered with, perhaps he never would have killed them. He also grew up thinking women were worthless, and now he is one. He comes across Eric, laying in the dunes sleeping. He sits down by him and Eric wakes up briefly, put his head in Frank's lap, and goes back to sleep. Franks sit with his brother and wonders what Eric will think when he wakes up and realizes he has a sister instead of a brother. The End. Uggggg, as I said, one of the most disturbing books I've read! I definitely need a palate cleanser!

Finished: The Great Believers (Makkai) This was a very good book, and an extremely emotional one for me. The two main characters were Fiona, a 21 year old who has lost her brother, Nico, to AIDS, and one of his circle of friends, Yale, a 25 year old gay man who becomes her best friend. The book flip flops back and forth between 1985 and 2015. In 1985 we meet all the young gay guys living in Chicago and just becoming aware of and scared to death of this virus that is afflicting so many of them. I can't really do a massive recap because nearly every feeling that Fiona has about the death of her brother...from how she wailed and collapsed after she'd found out about his diagnosis, to how she carried him with her after his death, always wondering how he would react to any given scenario or new movie, etc....is a feeling that I have had, and still have about my own brother who died of AIDS. Unlike my brother, many of the guys have been completely outcast by their parents, as Nico has. Fiona is the one who has stuck by Nico's side since  he left home at 15, kicked out by his father because he was gay, and she only 11 years old. It's a beautifully written book that gets into the nitty gritty of the relationships, loves, friendships, families of all these young men, and at the same time, Fiona's relationship to all the guys...how she loved them all, and how that affected her relationship with her own daughter as she grew up. The guys: Nico and Terrence, lovers in love and both tragically dead within a few months of each other in 1985. Yale and his lover of 3 years, Charlie, are a focus for awhile. Charlie is always certain that Yale will cheat on him with someone better looking. They've both been tested for HIV and are negative. Teddy and Julian, the two hot looking guys who never want for relationships and play a dangerous game with their lives. It's a time when they're all just hearing about the disease and think the government is just trying to trick them into getting tested so it can keep their information. And, Richard, an older gentleman, but the photographer of the group who will go on to become famous for his artistic work. Yale works at the Briggs Museum at Northwestern University and loves his job! Fiona's grandmother has just insisted that he come and look at some personal pieces she has which were drawn and given to her by a few moderately famous artists when she was a model in Paris before WWI. He's skeptical, but when he realizes that they are truly worth alot of money, he arranges for the museum to make a show out of them. They are worth a couple of million dollars it turns out. On the night of Nico's memorial service for just his friends, since they weren't allowed at his funeral, Charlie mistakenly thinks that Yale has gone upstairs with Teddy and had sex. When Yale comes down after just laying upstairs for awhile because he's overwhelmed, Charlie has gone and doesn't come home all night. They manage to patch things up, but when the tragic news comes the next month that Julian has tested positive for HIV, Charlie flips out. Turns out HE cheated on Yale with Julian when he thought Yale was with Teddy. So, yes, Charlie ends up HIV positive. He never really apologizes to Yale for making him have to go through the agony of waiting three months to know for sure if he's HIV positive as well. They break up and don't really speak again until Charlie is on his deathbed. Yale tests negative, but like an IDIOT sleeps with his intern who he assumes is a virgin just realizing he's gay. Of course, he's not a virgin. He's actually been around quite a bit and ends up having infected Yale. It's so, so very sad three quarters of the way through the book when Yale, who you just love and who has been there for Fiona through thick and think, becomes infected. It's only 1987, so it's pretty much still a death sentence at this point. Julian, decides not to stay around there and have people watch him die, so he goes to Puerto Rico. By the time it's 2015, and Fiona is 51 and in Paris searching for her estranged daughter, Claire, all of these young men have died years ago...Nico, Terrence, Teddy, Julian, Charlie and then Yale, her dear Yale. What was worse, Yale died alone in the hospital. Fiona had been by his side day and night, but suddenly went into labor and was rushed upstairs to a difficult labor and emergency C-section. Two days later, Yale died all alone even as Fiona made the nurses go back and forth keeping her updated. She never forgave herself for not being there, and all this loss somehow made it's way into her daughter's life and made her feel as if her mother loved "the boys" far more than she ever loved her. During her first year of college, Claire runs off and joins a cult, and by 2015, she's out of the cult, but has a three year old daughter with the boy she dragged with her into the cult. She's been spotted in Paris, but refuses to have contact with Fiona or her father, who is divorced from Fiona. Enter Richard, who has become that famous photographer, who is about to do a show in Paris, and he invites Fiona to come there to stay as long as she likes to find Claire. Fiona does this and finally tracks down Claire, who doesn't want much to do with her, but does start to warm up to her. She finally tells her mother how she knows the day of her birth was the worst day of Fiona's life because it was the day that Yale died and she always loved Yale more than she loved her. Fiona is able to tell her that she was born before Yale died, and that she loves her very much. It's a very tentative reunion, but a few strides are made. Suddenly, though, Richard has a huge surprise for Fiona....in walks a 55 year old Julian!!! He had never perished from AIDS. One of those lucky few who sometimes it didn't devastate, he had made it until 1996 when the triple cocktail of drugs came out which was moderately successful for many victims. He was there, living and breathing. Fiona can't believe she's got Julian there to share the memories and the burden of those memories with. When he praises Fiona to her daughter, Claire feels the old familiar feelings of her mother, "St. Fiona" again, and withdraws a bit. As they all go to Richard's show opening, they see how many of the pictures are from the 1980's and are of all those friends they lost. There is even  video footage of Nico with Yale and Charlie that Fiona has never seen. As the book ends, Fiona decides to stay in Paris awhile to repair her relationship with Claire, and Claire wanders the show looking at all the pictures. So, a very good book, very draining for me. So very real some of the things that were said and done. For instance, as each of the sick guys went to the hospital AIDS floor when he got too sick to be at home, the nurses there on that floor were so compassionate. There was hair cutting day, and they would get their scalps and heads massaged by the nurses before getting their trims. I sat in the hospital room with my brother while he got his hair so lovingly washed and his scalp massaged by an angel of a nurse two days before he died. So many moments like that throughout the book that mirrored moments that I carry with me. I'm just emotionally drained after reading this book, but I'm so, so glad I did. And I will end is with this quote from the book that is so profound to me, so true.

"This disease has magnified all our mistakes. Some stupid thing you did when you were nineteen, the one time you weren't careful. and it turns out that was the most important day of your life."  💔

Finished: The Book of Life (Harkness) The final book in the All Souls Trilogy, The Book of Life picks up where the second book left off, with vampire husband, Matthew de Clairmont, and witch wife, Diana Bishop, returning to the present day from their trip to the past, with Diana pregnant with their twins. Diana and Matthew had traveled back to the 1600's in search of how to get their hands on the Ashmole 782, or what becomes known as the book of life...the sacred book which they think contains the origins of not only vampires and witches, but daemons as well. All three groups are trying to get their hands on this book and keep it out of the hands of the others. Meanwhile, the Covenant, the governing committee consisting of three witches, three vampires and three daemons, adheres to the strictest of rules about vampires and witches mating, much less having children. While in the past, Diana actually gets to meet Matthew's father, Phillippe de Clairmont, the powerful, unwavering, head of the vampire clan. Phillippe accepts and declares Diana to be his daughter, thus assuring her protection down through the ages. Once back in their own time, Diana and Matthew are welcomed home with loving, open arms by friends and family, the irascible and highly dangerous Ysabeau, Matthew's vampire mother, Diana's beloved Aunt Sarah, a very canny witch, Marcus, Matthew's vampire son, and his new love, Phoebe, a human, Matthew's best friend, Hammish, a daemon, and household help and loyal friends, vampires Fernando and Marthe. And, meeting them back in current times, after meeting Diana for the first time in the second book, is the beloved, loyal, Scottish vampire, Gallowglass protector of both Diana and Matthew. Soon, Diana's best friend, Chris, just a plain old human, but a genius one, and Matthew's lab mate and good friend, Miriam, a vampire, also get into the mix as several evil forces come for the de Clairmonts. First, though, we have the joy of the de Clairmont babies being born...first out little Rebecca, the spitting image of her father, and named after her mother's deceased mother. And second, little Philip, with his mother's coloring, and named after his grandfather. Of course, once the babies are born, the danger to the family becomes more intense, especially when Benjamin, an evil vampire son of Matthew's, rears his head and makes it known that he will not rest until Matthew is dead and he has Diana for himself. He wants to make his own combo babies! Meanwhile, throughout the book, Diana's power gets stronger and stronger, as she has the powers of a weaver, which is a very strong, rare witch. Once she finds the three missing pages of the Ashmole 782 and reunites them with the book, she gains even more power, literally becoming the book of life. It takes all of them together to finally overcome Benjamin, who has done indescribably evil things in the name of getting back at his father who created him and then abandoned him hundreds of years before. The book does come to a happy ending, with the de Clairmonts back together, the Covenant disbanded, and Benjamin done in once and for all. And...the two babies are showing their "personalities". Looks like little Rebecca is going to be more vampire than witch...and little Philip is already causing things to float around, so will be powerful like his mama. That's the end of the book series, so far, but they are making a TV series based on the books and I can't wait to see that. :-)