Finished: A Man Called Ove (Backman) A very good book; a tugger of the heartstrings. A Man Called Ove is the story of a Swedish man, Ove, who is grumpy, set in his ways, matter of fact, unfriendly, and at 59, has just been unwillingly retired from his job not too long after his beloved wife, Sonja, has passed away. Ove is a stickler for the homeowner association rules when it comes to the neighborhood, and polices the street willing to confront anyone, including the neighborhood stray cat. He's tired, though, and heartbroken, and simply wants to go and be with his wife, rather than talking to her at her grave every day. He gets his affairs in order, cancels his phone and all his subscriptions and decides he will end his life. He doesn't count on the new neighbors literally barging in, accidentally running over his mailbox, breaking the association rules, and making themselves right at home in his life. He has to teach the young father, Patrick, how to back up a trailer, and he has to drive Patrick's very pregnant Iranian wife, Parvenah, and six & three year old precocious daughters to the hospital when an ambulance comes to collect Patrick when, trying to pry open a stuck two-story window, he falls from the ladder he borrowed from Ove. As the story unfolds, Parvenah comes to depend on Ove, and he on her. He teaches her to drive. She basically interrupts several of his carefully planned suicide attempts because she needs him for some reason or another, until he finally realizes that he IS needed and better stay on this side of things for a bit longer. He takes in the cat when it's attacked by a dog. He takes in a local teenage boy, whose father owns the local cafe, when he comes out as gay and is kicked out of the home. He teaches another teenage boy how to repair a bike, and then helps him pick out a car. And, most importantly, he gets back in touch with the other crotchety guy on the street, Rune, who used to be his best friend and comrade in all things in the association until they had a huge fight over something Ove can't remember anymore. Rune's wife, Anita, had been Sonja's best friend, which had thrown Rune and Ove together...but they never really minded it, and became friends themselves. It has been years since they've spoken, though, and Anita has come to Ove for help with her heater because Rune is suffering from Alzheimer's. What's more, the government wants to take him away and put him in a home. Ove begrudgingly, or maybe not, helps Anita and when he realizes that she's been battling the bureaucracy for two years and they are coming any day to get Rune, he mobilizes his new friends and neighbors and calls a local reporter who he always denied giving a story to when he saved a man off a railroad track one day. So, the new found friends rally around and get Rune kept in his house and promise that they will all be involved in helping Anita care for him. Ove gets more and more attached to Parvenah and her kids. They begin to even refer to him as Grandad. One night, after the oldest girl's eighth birthday, Ove confronts some hoodlums trying to burglarize a neighbor's house and falls to the ground with a heart attack. Parvenah is frantic, but gets him to the hospital where the doctor explains he's got an enlarged heart, but with medication, should be ok for another few years. Not long after, Parvenah gives birth to a little boy, who the author never names, but I can't imagine it's not Ove! Anyway, the book delves into Ove's past, and how honorable and hard-working he was because his single father raised him that way. It explores the day that Sonja bursts into Ove's black and white world with her colorful personality and infectious laugh, and he knows then and there he will marry her. It quietly develops all these new relationships that are thrust upon Ove until by the time he is actually going to die, he's made sure that the gay boy and his father have been reunited and that Patrick and Parvenah's children will all be taken care of with the money he never spent. It's a very good, very heartwarming story which brought tears to my eyes more than once! I really like this author. He's the same buy who wrote Bear Town and it's sequel. I will definitely be seeking out more of his books.

Finished: The Innocent (Baldacci) I've enjoyed a few Baldacci books now, and they're always suspenseful page-turners and great for airplane reading! This one introduces Will Robie, an assassin for a secret department of the United States government who kills extremely bad people who are planning harm to our country. He always follows orders, no questions asked.....until one night he is ordered to assassinate an American mother of two who also works for the government. When he hesitates and decides not to kill her, especially since her two year old son is in her arms, the "back up team" shoots straight through the little boy's head and into the mother's and kills them both. Will Robie goes immediately on the run, knowing that he will now be marked for elimination. He implements his self-survival escape plan and hops on a bus under an assumed name just in time to see what appears to be another assassin sit down behind a fourteen year old girl and move to murder her! Of course, Will intervenes and saves the girl, taking her with him off the bus just seconds before it explodes! The girl, Julie, has just witnessed the murder of her parents and gone on the run herself. A very unlikely friendship evolves between Julie and the forty year old Will as they work frantically together to figure out how their situations, and the victims of their situations, are not coincidental at all, but very intertwined. With the help of FBI agent, Nicole Vance, Will and Julie get to the bottom of who is killing the people around them and why. I may just read the other Will Robie books from Baldacci! We'll see. :-)

Finished: Ghosted (Walsh) This was a pretty good page-turning book! Unlike I usually do, I'm not going to give away the huge plot twist, just in case someone reads this. I don't want to ruin the surprise. :-) This is the story of a 38 year old British woman named Sarah who has lived in the states for the last 19 years since a tragic accident ripped apart her family, which at the time included her parents and her 12 year old sister, when she was only 19. Back in town to see her parents, Sarah makes it a point to visit the sight of the life-altering accident on its anniversary and happens to meet a local man named Eddie. The have an instant connection, with equal interests and easy conversation and spend the next seven days together in his converted barn home falling in love. They both have painful situations, Sarah, her past and Eddie, dealing with his mentally ill mother. They think it's crazy that it happened so fast, but they both can't deny their feelings. Eddie has already got a holiday planned with a buddy to Spain, but he promises to call Sarah, even from the airport. Sarah promises to extend her stay in the UK and meet him at the airport when he lands back in town, where they will then figure out the next step of their future together. Only....Eddie never calls, and he never shows up at the airport. Despite messages from Sarah that get more and more frantic, Sarah doesn't hear a word from Eddie. She tries to convince her friends that something must be wrong, but they just think she's been "ghosted" and that she'll never hear from this guy again. Sarah knows the feelings were real, and she is heartbroken, and determined to get to the bottom of things. What follows are a few revelations that show neither of them had been completely truthful with the other in those 7 days. I'm not going to give any more of a recap than this, because I really don't want to spoil it. :-) A nice, suspenseful, summer read.

Finished: Beowulf (translated by Hieatt) I decided to go ahead and read Beowulf, the narrative story, not the poem. I glanced at the poem in both Old English and translated to modern English and I'm not ready to tackle that yet, lol. Anyway, it was interesting to read the narrative first to get a handle on the characters and the action. In the book I just read, The Mere Wife, that is based on Beowulf, the boy, Gren, is no monster at all, and far more sympathetic than Beowulf's evil monster, the Grendel, who was supposedly an ancestor of Cain's, who had been banished to hell along with all his descendants for killing his brother. And, in The Mere Wife, it never even dawned on me that Ben Wolfe was supposed to be Beowulf, duh. I guess because I assumed Beowulf was a hero with a true heart. Ben Wolfe was a hero after his own purposes. He'd actually been cowardly and shied away from the battle when he fought in the military, hiding in alleyways, and now he was basically just going after the "monsters" to elevate himself in the eyes of Willa and the town. Beowulf in Beowulf is much more courageous and pure of heart. He apparently fights with God on his side. Beowulf does go to the rescue of the Danes who are being mercilessly attacked by Grendel. He takes Grendel down with his bare hands, and then has to deal with Grendel's monster mother who rises from the murky, fiery mere to avenge her son. Beowful also disposes of the mother. It's not until fifty years later, after he has fought many valiant battles and patiently waited to be king of the Geats rather than taking a thrown from his kinsmen, that he is felled by the fiery dragon that plagues the countryside. Once again, though, he goes in valiantly to brave the dragon, and with the help of only one of his men who doesn't run away, he manages to slay the dragon before perishing of his burns. So, now that I know the story and characters, I may tackle the translated poem at some point. :-)

Finished: The Mere Wife (Headley) A very good book about two very different mothers, with two very different sons, who just want to be the best of friends. Apparently a modern take on Beowulf, which I now need to read, the story is about Gren, who is the son of Dana Mills, an American vet who was fighting in a war, was captured, and beheaded on television...or so it was assumed. In reality, she is not actually sure what happened to her, but she woke up six months later in the desert, hugely pregnant. She doesn't know who the father of her child is, but now in an Army hospital in the U.S., she has all sorts of visions of her dead comrades. She flees the hospital and goes to the one safe place she can think of, the underground mountain tunnels where her family lived after being run from their own land. She gives birth to her child, but he's got a full set of teeth and head of hair. He's not like a "normal" baby, so she decides to stay in their underground cocoon, an actual ancient, closed-down railway station, and keep him from the "monsters" out there that would harm him. Their haven is bordered by a mere, an icy lake with a warm hot spring in the middle of it, which seems to have the spirits of past souls making it come alive as well. Gren is smart and devoted to his mother, but by the time he's seven years old, he's lonely and curious about the town that is just within his reach at the bottom of the mountain...the town that forced his family off their land and was even built on some of their burial grounds. Nearest him is a huge mansion called Herot Hall. Herot Hall is occupied by Willa,  her husband Roger, and their little son, Dylan. They are a picture perfect family on the outside, and socially the cream of the small town crop. Dylan is a sensitive boy who takes piano lessons, but whose father also wants him to play sports. Willa spends her time throwing parties and wondering how much of a maternal connection she really has with this little being that came out of her. When Gren's curiousity gets the best of him after he watches Dylan from afar, he actually steals into the house and befriends Dylan. Dylan is captivated by Gren, and together they play on the piano. By the time Willa hears the unusual music and makes it to the room, Gren is gone in a flash, but has left behind what look like claw marks deeply embedded in the piano keys! Dylan cries for his new friend Gren, and Willa thinks a wild animal has made it's way into their house somehow. The police are called, which introduces us to police chief, Ben Wolfe, who will become the nemesis for Dana and Gren. Neither the chief or her husband believe that any wild animal was really in the house, but Willa knows something was there. As Christmas comes and goes and the Herot's prepare for their huge annual New Year's Eve party, Gren watches with  longing from the mountain, through the huge windows of Herot Hall...and Dylan watches every day for Gren from his own bedroom window. At the party, when Dylan begins to choke on a lego and no one at the party knows what to do, Gren is there in an instant, and swoops Dylan up and runs off with him up the mountain. Of course, Dana, who by now has figured out that Gren has come too dangerously close to all the town people, follows him there to protect him. The party is filled with commotion and the sight of the bedraggled Dana and her son puts fear in everyone. They figure out that Dana is the soldier who was supposedly beheaded years ago on television, and the story becomes all about Dana swooping in and kidnapping Dylan! Ben Wolfe leads the charge to go and get Dylan back, but in the hunt, Roger Herot is killed. After a couple of weeks, and the funeral of Roger, Willa and the town assume that little Dylan is most likely dead. In reality, he's in the tunnel with Gren and Dana and is truly happy for the first time in his young life. He has no desire to go back home. However, Ben Wolfe, who we find out is really more about getting the accolades he will achieve and being a hero if he finds Dylan, finally figures out where their underground home is. In a tragic confrontation where Ben severely injures Dana, Gren must make the choice to grab his mother and take her deeper into the tunnel for her own safety, thus leaving Dylan there to be found by Ben before Gren can return and take him with them as well. So, Dylan is returned home, Ben is the hero, Ben tells Dylan and everyone else that he killed both Dana and Gren, the "monster",  Ben marries Willa and they have twin boys, and both Dylan and Gren are miserable. Years pass until both the boys are fifteen and realize that the other is still alive. They come together for a brief, joyous reunion before Ben Wolfe decides to finish the job he knows he never completed. :-( We end with the death of Dylan first, by the hands of his own mother who hallucinated that she was actually killing Gren, and then the death of Gren as he fights to the death with Ben to avenge Dylan, and then finally with the death of Ben, who is killed by Dana who drives a newly refurbished tunnel train right into him, and then off the bridge it was driving on, thus killing Dana in the process as well. In the end, the only one left standing is Willa, who is last seen being carted off in handcuffs for killing her own son. It's a tragic story, which apparently Beowulf is as well. The writing is beautiful, though, with so much description and lyrical prose. And, the story is really so simple...why can't the boys who are so different be friends? Why can't Gren be out in the real world and accepted for his differences? Sigh. A really good book that I'm glad I read!

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. :-)