Finished: milk and honey (kaur) I've read many of Rupi Kaur's poems from her milk and honey collection before, but never all in the order they were intended in her book. I was really excited to get this book for Christmas and read it through, section by section: the hurting, the loving, the breaking, the healing; poem by poem. It was as lovely and explicit and truthful as I thought it would be. It was a book I couldn't stop reading, but I really wanted to savor each poem, so I did...reading most of them more than once. I loved the personal journey that Rupi showed of her life, and I'm sure will seek out more of her poetry to read in the future. Until then, here is just a sampling of the poems that touched me.

From the hurting:

how is it so easy for you
to be kind to people he asked

milk and honey dripped
from my lips as I answered

cause people have not 
been kind to me

From the loving:

i know i
should crumble
for better reasons
but have you seen
that boy he brings
the sun to its
knees every
night

From the loving:

you might not have been my first love
but you were the love that made
all the other loves
irrelevant

From the breaking:

you said. if it is meant to be. fate will bring us back
together. for a second i wonder if you are really
that naive. if you really believe fate works like
that. as if it lives in the sky staring down at us. as
if it has five fingers and spends its time placing us
like pieces of chess. as if it is not the choices we
make. who taught you that. tell me. who
convinced you. you've been given a heart and
a mind that isn't yours to use. that your actions
do not define what will become of you. i want to
scream and shout it's us you fool. we're the only
ones that can bring us back together. but
instead, i sit quietly. smiling softly through
quivering lips thinking. isn't it such a tragic thing.
when you can see it so clearly by the other person
doesn't.

From the breaking:

i don't know what living a balanced life feels like
when i am sad
i don't cry i pour
when i am happy
i don't smile i glow
when i am angry
i don't yell i burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is
when i love i give them wings
but perhaps that isn't
such a good thing cause
they always tend to leave
and you should see me
when my heart is broken
i don't grieve
i shatter

From the healing:

perhaps
i don't deserve
nice things
cause i am paying
for sins i don't
remember

From the healing:

what terrifies me most is how we
foam at the mouth with envy
when others succeed
but sigh in relief
when they are failing

our struggle to
celebrate each other is
what's proven most difficult
in being human

From the healing:

you must
want to spend
the rest of your life
with yourself
first

Finished: Nine Perfect Strangers (Moriarty) A book about nine strangers who meet at a remote Australian health resort for a ten day program of mental and physical rejuvenation, run by a former female corporate bigwig, who suffered a near fatal heart attack ten years earlier, and her right hand man, the paramedic who helped save her life. Unbeknownst to the guests, their methods are going to include a couple of unorthodox and illegal methods which cause friction and tension and make you wonder if one or more of the guests may not make it out of the program alive! The nine guests: A successful, fifty-something female author whose just had her first novel rejection and has been scammed out of a load of money by an online "boyfriend with a sick son" scam; a fifty-something former Aussie rugby player who has lost the purpose of his life, along with his marriage, after retiring from the sport; a forty-something divorce lawyer who is too good-looking and confident for his own good, who has no desire to have children, but with a gay partner left at home who wants to adopt a child; a young twenty-something couple who has won a 22 million dollar lottery which changed them from struggling to make ends meet, to struggling with the wife altering her complete looks with cosmetic surgery, and the husband being more in love with his new expensive car than his wife; a newly divorced, thirty-something, mother of four young daughters who has zero self-confidence since her husband left her for another woman, and who feels just losing weight will solve all her problems; and, a mother and father with their 20 year old daughter who are struggling with the biggest pain of all...the suicide of their son, their daughter's twin, a few days shy of his 18th birthday nearly three years ago. They will spend his (and their daughter's) 21st birthday at the retreat. All of the characters are likable and unlikable at the same time...but for the most part, all are good people. They are deprived of communication for several days, and then finally put together in a cellar room with Masha, the owner of the facility, and Yao, the former paramedic, and given hallucinogenic drugs which cause each of them to certainly open up and be honest about their feelings and truthful about what part they've played in the misery of their own lives. The therapy seems to be going pretty well when the mother of the 20 year old realizes they've all been drugged and begins threatening legal action. She manages to tip the already nearly unbalanced Masha over the edge and Masha proceeds to keep them locked in the cellar until further notice. Masha even drugs Yao to keep him from letting them out, and the guests go for nearly two entire days with water only, and no food. Every so often Masha turns all the lights out on them or comes onto the monitoring screen to talk wildly to them. There is a code needed to open the huge wooden door, but they can never figure it out, even when they calm down and work together. All their truths do come out to each other, however, and they do form a lovely human bond. Everyone rallies round the family who has lost their son, and especially embrace Zoe, the young woman who has lost her brother. This entire family each has a secret that has made them feel the guilt of thinking if only they'd taken another action, that Zach would still be alive. Finally being honest with each other, and the support of the group, helps them to come to terms with Zach's death. Meanwhile, the crazy Masha has started a fire to burn down the facility while they are all locked in! It turns out, however, that she's only just set a fire in a bucket outside the door so they'll smell the smoke and she's put the sound of a loud fire and beams falling on a video that she puts on loop and plays to them over the intercom. It's really cruel! Anyway, they finally try the door in a last ditch effort, and it has been unlocked from the outside by Masha, who never intended to harm them, but who has indeed lost her marbles a bit. They all make it safely home while Masha and Yao are taken to jail. The book wraps up with showing how everyone continues on with their lives a week, a month, a few months, a year and five years later. The author and the retired rugby player end up married five years later, which is really lovely. The young couple end up divorced because they'd really changed so much. The young mother of four regains her confidence and embraces her girls. The lawyer goes home and tells his partner that he'd like to look into adoption. And, Zoe and her parents have started celebrating HER birthday again and are slowly, and steadily getting on with life without Zach. This was a really good book delving into the lives, losses, fears and motivations of these different people and how they grew after their horrifying but enlightening experience!

Finished: Life After Life (Atkinson) A very good book with a fascinating premise that kept me reading, wondering what would happen with each one of Ursula Todd's new lives! Ursula is born in February 1910 in her family home, Fox Corner, in England. She dies before she can even take her first breath, as the cord is wrapped around her neck. There's a blizzard about and the doctor had been unable to get there to help her mother, Sylvia. The next chapter immediately starts on the same day, with the same blizzard, yet somehow the doctor has made it to Fox Corner this time and is able to cut the cord away and save little Ursula. Ursula lives until she is nearly five years old with her mom, her father Hugh, her big brother, Maurice, big sister Pamela, and her baby brother Teddy. When at the beach one day, she follows her seven year old sister into the waves and drowns. We are immediately taken back to the snowy night in February 1910, where Ursula is born again. Each time we revisit Ursula's life, more details about each of the characters, and different events that have led them to where they are in their lives are brilliantly explored. In Ursula's third life, she has a bad premonition of the water and doesn't want to follow Pamela in at the beach. Is the hesitation enough for the nearby artist to look up and see them go in? Maybe so, since he runs in and saves them both. A couple of years later, Ursula falls from a window trying to recover a doll that her mean brother, Maurice (who never changes), has thrown onto the roof. In her next life, she is raped at the age of sixteen by a friend who Maurice brings home from school. Ursula is so sheltered, she doesn't even know what has happened or where babies come from. She is, of course, pregnant, and goes to her Aunt Izzie for help. Izzie takes her for an illegal abortion, and Ursula dies after that. In her next life, when she is confronted on the dark stairwell by he brother's friend, she kicks him and runs away. Ursula does not have memories of her previous life, but moments where she feels deja vu and knows that she must alter her behavior in certain situations for one reason or another. She has the deja vu, along with nightmares of death, so often, that she begins to see a psychiatrist who is an important person in her life, really the only one who understands her, and believes she is being reincarnated over and over. He doesn't share this with his young patient, but he does help her accept her feelings. Eventually, Ursula gets older and becomes very involved in World War II as someone who works in the government, recording information, and is part of a group who helps to dig people out of the various bombings. It's very surreal to her because in a couple of her previous lives, she has actually been killed by the very bombs she is now helping to dig people out of....many of the victims, people that resonate deeply in her soul because she knew them before, but doesn't know that. In one of her lives, her studies take her to Germany and she is actually friends with a girl who turns out to be Hitler's mistress! Ursula meets Hitler, marries a German man, and has a child who grows to be eleven years old before her husband is killed in the war and Ursula and Frieda, her child, are left desperately starving and freezing in Germany. Frieda is on her deathbed and the Russians are rumored to be fast approaching when Ursula gives her daughter a poison capsule and then takes one herself, ending their lives and the only German chapter of Ursula's life. The war still affects her family considerably, though, as both her younger brothers, beloved, kind, Teddy and charming, Jimmy, are both fighting for the British in the war. When Teddy's plane goes down in flames in Germany, and none of his fellow pilots see him eject, then the entire family mourns. Ursula is beyond distraught, but in this life, lives until she's 57 years old, where she is given a retirement party for her many years of service. She's been having blinding headaches, and soon after, dies again. Next thing we know, it's February of 1910 again and we see more snippets of her life, and a few changes in things that happened. This time, when Ursula is a child, her deja vu events turn to true memories and she has somewhat of a breakdown. Sent to a sanatorium, she has a few sessions with her old doctor and then formulates a plan. She patiently lives her life and goes back to Germany when she's older and re-cultivates her friendship with Hitler's mistress. In 1930, a comfortable part of his inner circle, she pulls out a gun at dinner and we are to believe that she assassinates him. We don't know for certain, though, because she goes to black when Hitler's men kill her in turn. It's February 1910 again, we see, again, several different snippets of what has happened in Ursula's life as she's growing up. In this one, the doctor doesn't make it there on the snowy night, but the mother learned (somehow) from watching the doctor cut the cord in the second life, and she takes out a pair of scissors and saves her own daughter! Anyway, we fast forward pretty quickly to 1945 and there was still a war, and Teddy's plane still goes down in flames in enemy territory, but in this life, his radio operators slaps a parachute on him and ejects him from the plane! He survives over a year in a prison camp before the war is over and he waits in a cafe in London to reunite with his girlfriend since childhood and his sister, Ursula! When Teddy sees Ursula across the room, he mouths "Thank You", but we don't ever really know what she did. Did she kill Hitler? If so, did one of Hitler's early minions take his place? Did she know the radio operator and tell him to save Teddy? The next chapter just starts back in February of 1910, so even if we assume that Ursula dies of old age in this one, then what will the next life bring? This was such a good, good book, and very well written! So clever! It bogged down just a bit for me during the bombing portions in England. Those chapters went on and on, but I can't really fault the author for that. It's still amazing to me that World War II isn't really that far back in our past. Anyway, I'm so glad I read this book! I think I'm going to read her book, A Good In Ruins. It is actually the story of Teddy and his war experience!!

Finished: The Perfect Mother (Molloy) A nice page-turner about a group of mothers whose babies are all born in the month of May, so they establish the May Mother's Club. They are all from different backgrounds and don't really know each other all that well, or the one "daytime dad" who is part of the group. The group insists that single mom, Winnie, leave her child with a baby sitter one evening to go and have a night out with the girls. They think she's too serious and clingy to her baby, Midas. So, of course, while they're all out, baby Midas is kidnapped!! After clearing the babysitter of any wrongdoing, soon Winnie herself is arrested for the disappearance of her own child. Some secret relationships come to light, and the narrator of the story, who we don't know, but we know is the wrong-doer, is a surprise reveal! Baby Midas is found safe in the end. :-) Just a nice, light read, but suspenseful read!