Finished: The Last Tycoon (Fitzgerald) The last novel by Fitzgerald, which was incomplete at the time of his death, is the story of Monroe Stahr, a Hollywood producer, and is supposedly based on the real life "wonder boy" producer Irving Thalberg. Fitzgerald's writing is always very powerful, but you can tell he was not done with the story or with possibly rearranging parts of it. His notes are included at the back of the book and it's very interesting to read those and see what he was intending for the major characters, especially Stahr. The story is narrated by his business partner's college-aged daughter, Cecelia, who fancies herself in love with Stahr. She tells about how powerful he is, how he changed movies, how successful he made them after the depression, how he interacts with people, and at the same time, how vulnerable he can be when he falls for a woman who is the spitting image of his late, dead wife. We see a bit of him pursuing that woman, and her falling for him, but warning him he doesn't know everything. Then, it turns out she's got a fiance and is getting married the day after they are intimate! Cecelia then decides it's time for her to swoop in and make her move. The book ends there rather abruptly, but the notes suggest that they do have an affair, but only for a few weeks before he breaks her heart. They also indicate that he takes a trip to the northeast, and falls ill and dies due to a heart that he has overworked because he won't ever take a break. I imagine the story would have been much clearer (obviously) if Fitzgerald had been able to actually complete it. What he did write, though, is his typical, excellent prose. :-)

Finished: The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (Gray) This was a very good book! It's the story of three sisters and a brother who are raised by a physically and emotionally absent father after their mother dies when the oldest is twelve years old. Althea, the oldest, literally becomes the mother figure for six year old Viola, four year old Joe and one year old Lillian. Althea remembers alot about her mother, and how kind she was, and how much time she spent with the children. Flash forward over 40 years later and Althea, plus her husband Proctor, are in jail awaiting the judgment that will either set them free or send them on to a more permanent prison home. Althea and Proctor had become respectable members of their small town, but when businesses started closing down due to the economy and a closed factory, they struggled mightily to keep their restaurant open. Their restaurant became a beacon of hope for other town members, as Althea and Proctor held continuous fundraisers for the victims of a huge flood that also devastated the town. As people just handed over their life-savings to the couple, they were deceiving everyone, taking the money and spending it on themselves as fast as it hit their hands. So, needless to say, the betrayed town is furious and wants them to go to prison for years. Althea and Proctor have twin teenage daughters at home, though, Baby Vi and Kim. They are as opposite as can be, and are not handling the treatment they are receiving at school and in town very well. To make it worse, Kim, who feels as if her mother always favored Baby Vi more, is the one who called the police to turn her parents in when she found out what they were doing! She didn't do it out of right versus wrong. She did it because she was mad at her mother. So, Kim is living with the guilt of that action sending her parents to prison without realizing it was their own actions that did that. Kim and Baby Vi have been living with their Aunt Lillian for the past two years while their parents sit in jail awaiting the decision. As decision time comes, Althea's other sister, Viola, comes to town as well...missing the actual sentencing because she's got major issues of her own. Althea and Proctor are found guilty and sentenced to multiple years, and the tension and stress rises even higher. We see snippets of Althea's life in prison, her communication with Proctor, and her relationship with a few of her fellow prisoners. We also see that Althea is still very angry with her own daughter and with some self-reflection she realizes she has become liker her distant father. We also learn that Lillian was abused by Joe when they were the only two left at home with their father. Always craving his father's attention, Joe lashed out in anger when he didn't get it. He didn't sexually abuse Lillian, but locked her in a dark closet for hours, sometimes days, at a time. So, there are lots of family issues to deal with in this book once Althea's siblings are all there trying to figure out what to do with the girls permanently. In crisis, Kim runs away and they all fear for her life because she sends a few texts that are pretty despondent to her twin, but Baby Vi doesn't share them right away. They end up finding Kim in time before she can harm herself. It is decided that Kim and Baby Vi, will go and live with Viola and her wife in Chicago. Althea, realizing she didn't want to be like her father, makes tentative steps to make amends with Kim with weekly phone calls to her and Baby Vi. Lillian confronts her brother, tells him to stay out of her life (he's a preacher now who just wants to let it all be in the past), and finally sells the home she grew up in and moves to New York to pursue a career. Told in the voices of the this is a very well written, powerful story about the struggles each of these sisters went through and how they overcame to the best of their ability. Well, minus the felony scheme of Althea and Proctor. No excuse for that!

Finished: The Silent Patient (Michaelides) A great book about an artist, Alicia Berensen, who shoots her husband to death (or does she?) and then is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she never utters another word. The police simply find her standing over her husband with the murder weapon, and she never says a single word to anyone. Six years later, Theo Faber, a psychotherapist who followed her case and became intrigued by the one painting she did after the murder, seeks a job at the same psychiatric hospital and becomes her therapist. This was such a good book with a huge twist. I'm not even going to write any more about it because anyone who might read this, I really don't want to spoil it. :-) I loved the twist, though, and I usually figure twists out, so this was a nice surprise. Great book! 

Finished: Liar Liar (Jackson) This was a pretty good semi-page-turner, whodunit by an author who I've read quite a bit of. I actually finished this book a week ago, but then traveled, so never wrote the blog entry. I'm going to be really lazy and just cut and paste the blurb about the book from Amazon in my blog. :-) I will say that I kept getting the feeling that I'd read this book before, but it wasn't on my list anywhere, so maybe I had only read about it. Anyway, it was good but not mind blowing. Here's the Amazon blurb:

"In death, Didi Storm is finally getting the kind of publicity that eluded her in life. Twenty years ago, the ex-beauty queen worked the Vegas strip as a celebrity impersonator, too busy to spare much time for her daughter, Remmi. Shortly before she leaped from a San Francisco building, Didi’s profile was rising again, thanks to a tell-all book. To Detective Dani Settler, it looks like a straightforward suicide, or perhaps a promotional stunt gone wrong. But Remmi knows the truth isn’t so simple. Because though the broken body on the sidewalk is dressed in Didi’s clothes and wig, it isn’t Didi.

Remmi was fifteen when she last saw her mother. They parted in the aftermath of a terrible night in the Mojave desert when Remmi—who’d hidden in Didi’s car en route to meet her crush, Noah Scott—instead witnessed Didi handing over one of her newborn twins to a strange man. Then Didi disappeared, as did Remmi’s other half-sibling. The authorities have found no clues. Yet Remmi has always sensed that someone is watching her . . .

Remmi is shocked when Noah resurfaces. He was also in the desert that night, and now runs his own PI firm. He too believes it’s time to find out what happened. As they and Detective Settler dig deeper, the truth about Remmi’s missing family begins to emerge—a story of ruthless ambition and lies that someone will kill again and again to keep hidden . . ."

Finished: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Smith) A very good book which I took my time reading and savoring, about a young girl named Francie Nolan who lives with her parents and brother, Neely, in the slums of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY, in the early 1900's. The family struggles to make enough money to keep food on the table and heat in the house, but they make do. Francie and Neely both have to work at a very young age because every penny counts towards the family income. Their mother, Katie, and father, Johnny, were young and in love once, but as Katie has worked to support the family steadily, Johnny, a song and dance man, doesn't have consistent work and has become an alcoholic. He's got a good heart and loves his family, but he succumbs to the alcoholism at a fairly young age. We also meet Katie's mother and sisters and see a bit of their family life. However, the story is seen mostly from the viewpoint of the sensitive, yet strong, Francie, who is a beautiful writer and longs to grow up to write someday. We watch her age from 11 to 16 as she goes through these important years with very little money, few friends, and the typical yearning of a budding teenage girl who would like to fall in love. She does meet and fall in love with one boy, who it turns out is off to the war and was only interested in her for the weekend, which she thankfully declines. The other boy she meets falls in love with her, but she simply likes him...good old dependable Ben. When the story ends when Francie is 16 and heading to college, Ben who is 21, has promised to marry her in a few years when she's old enough. Francie goes along with it, figuring she has a few years to sort her life out and decide if that's what she truly wants. There's so much detail in the book...about the relationship between Francie and Neely, which is close, and Francie and her father, which is also close, and Francie and her mother, who clearly favors Neely, and Francie and her English teacher, who actually discourages some very good, but sad, stories that Francie writes, causing Francie to burn many of her writings. By the end of the book, Katie is remarrying to a man who can actually afford to give them a better life, who they all like, and it is his generosity that allows Francie to go off to college and chase her dreams. A really good book, which actually has me interested in reading more about the author to see if this is rather autobiographical. :-)

Finished: Her One Mistake (Perks) A page-turner about a young mother who leaves her four-year old daughter in her best friend's care at the school carnival, only to have her best friend lose sight of her child, resulting in her abduction. Harriet has never been separated from her young daughter, Alice, when her best friend, Charlotte, finally convinces her to let her babysit Alice while Harriet takes an accounting course at the college. Harriet is a stay at home mom with a very controlling husband, Brian. Charlotte is a divorced mother of three young children, who is on good terms with her ex-husband. Harriet is meek and shy, while Charlotte is outgoing with lots of friends, yet they form an unlikely friendship, having similar backgrounds where their father's left their lives at a young age. Friends for several years, Harriet is the only person she trusts to keep Alice for her. Charlotte takes her children and Alice to the school carnival, and doesn't keep quite the eye on the kids that she should when she lets them loose on the giant bouncy house slide. When her kids return from the slide but Alice does not, she soon realizes, along with the rest of the people at the carnival that Alice has been abducted. A police investigation ensues with Charlotte questioned relentlessly for focusing more on her cell phone social media than watching the kids. She soon becomes the pariah of the town. The investigation also focuses on Brian, who we find out has been patiently making Harriet think she's been going mad over the last year because he wants to exert complete control over her and have her totally dependent on him. The ending is actually a surprise as it turns out the meek Harriet has actually arranged for her daughter's own kidnapping by her estranged father who had come back into her life only a few months before. Having watched her father and Alice spend alot of time together and form a bond, Harriot feels confident that her plan will work and her father will help her get away from Brian along with her daughter. The ending is suspenseful, as Brian finds out where the grandfather and Alice are and endangers everyone's life. Charlotte, after hearing the awful truth from Harriet, still comes to her rescue in the end and helps save her from the maniacal Brian. The grandfather protects Alice with his own life, and Harriet and Charlotte are never friends again...but Brian is lost at sea and presumed dead. Though...his body is never found. Possible sequel? hmmmm :-)

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!