Book Buzz

REBECCA STEAD

When You Reach Me is a story about friendship and time. The mystery at the core of the book flicks around the edges for a long time before revealing itself.

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, and they know who to avoid. Like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a kid on the street for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then a mysterious note arrives, scrawled on a tiny slip of paper. The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows things no one should know. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

It’s a good read.

DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS

The choices, actions and decision people make reverberate far further than we could imagine then return to haunt us. Michael Skid skid comes from a well to do family in a New Brunswick town. His father is a judge. A misunderstanding separates him from his childhood friend Tommie Donnerel, so Skid chooses to spend the summer slumming being a hippy, doing drugs, drinking shine and seducing a naive young girl. He and his friends fall prey to the charismatic criminal Everette Hutch. They have some fun but of course things go wrong and people have to pay and not alway the right people. The entire community is effected. Richards writes well; it is a great read.

MICHAEL AKYOOB

Set in 2001, In Search of Mercy seamlessly moves between events in the past and the present, and blends scenes from all time periods into surreal dreams for Dexter that seem more fact than fiction, more real than not. Ayoob writes well. Dexter is working two dead-end jobs when he’s approached by Lou, a bum who inexplicably throws around $100 bills when the mood suits him, to find his long lost love, an actress named Agnes Zagbroski, who took the stage name of Mercy Carnahan when she was “discovered” by Hollywood in the 1940s. Dexter thinks Lou is crazy — and he probably is — but he’s intrigued nonetheless. Kidnapped and tortured by four men eight years ago, Dexter is still trying to straighten out his life.

Mercy is not so much a mystery but a character study. A good read.

NICOLAS DICKNER

Apocalypse is a novel of obsession. Hope believed that the world would come to an end of 07 17 2001. Her entire family believes that the world is coming to an end soon but they all have individual dates for their personal apocalypse. When the date finally comes and the world doesn’t end, the Randall family member slowly loses control and goes mad. We see Hope’s mother’s madness a the beginning of the novel. Hope writes her date everywhere, on pieces of paper, on binders, everywhere. It is an obsession. Hopes best friend Mickey supports her through her mother’s bizarre behavior. Eventually Hope’s obsession with her date takes her to Japan in search of a mysterious author who she believe can help her.

A fine read but not as good as his first novel Nikolski.

STIEG LARRSON

For a book in which precious little happens, this novel is quite the page turner. This is the final book in Larrson’s Millennium trilogy. Hornet’s Nest starts precisely where the last book ended. If you haven’t read the other books you need to read them first. All excellent. This book deals with journalists, lawyers and police researching exactly what happened in Sweden during the last forty years that Salander’s rights could have been so severely abused. I often complain that books are too long, that they need editing. At over 500 pages Hornet’s Nest does not fit into that category. It is a must read.

Why were these great books covered so poorly?

BRETT ELLEN BLOCK

Do all family secrets and dirty laundry get hung on the line for all to see? The Grave of God’s Daughter is set in a small steel-mill town, pre-WWI. Block does an excellent job of conveying the stifling poverty and misery of this time and place. Opening with the funeral of her mother, we are soon swept away by the remembrances of this woman who is burying her mother.

Martin and his sister are portrayed with all the fear and terror that children of an alcoholic father and a distant mother actually feel. The daughter finds out the secret their mother harbors while making enough money to buy back a black Madonna. She does this by pretending to be a boy, delivering meat by hand and betting on a dogfight.

And she does uncover the family’s secrets.

ISABEL ALLENDE

Island is a rich historical novel of racism and slavery. The first part takes place in what will become Haiti on Sainte-Domingue. Tete is bought by a French sugar plantation owner who rapes her when she is 11. She has two children fathered by her owner. The second one she is allowed to keep. Allende’s strong descriptions of the brutality that slaves lived with all their lives are chilling. The sugar trade in the Antilles was often called “blood sugar.” When the slaves rebel Tete saves her owners life and is promised her freedom and her daughter’s freedom. They flee to New Orleans where the story drags somewhat.

Allende is one of my favorite authors. But this is not one of best works. Still it is a good read.

LOUISE ERDRICH

The slow and painful dissolving of a marriage gone awry. Gil is a successful artist who only paints his wife Irene nude. Irene feels overwhelmed by the relationship, by everyone observing her all the time. When she realizes that Gil has been reading her diaries she locks them in a safety deposit bank and creates a new false diary in a red notebook to punish and manipulate her husband. Gil refuses her pleas to leave but she seems unable to pick up and leave him. They both fall into drinking too much. Meanwhile the three kids are foundering not knowing what to expect.

A good read. Sad but not over wheming.

TERI COYNE

“Two days after my father had a massive stroke, my mother shot herself in the head.” What a great first line. Bridge is narrated by Cat, an alcoholic ner do well. Cat’s sibling return for the funeral and the medical emergency. And this reunion brings alive the hell of living with an extremely abusive parent. The story is gripping and fast paced.

A good but dreadfully dark read.

MICHAEL KIMBALL

This is the story of a suicide written as letters, notes, interviews, clippings. Jonathan Bender, a good-hearted weatherman with a well-documented case of Major Depressive Disorder. Bender has spent his final days on Earth writing not only to everyone he ever met—his mother, father, brother, elementary-school classmates, college girlfriends, former employers, landlords, and ex-wife—but also to Santa Claus, newspaper want ads, the state of Michigan, the building where he went to high school, and “Michael J. Fox or Alex P. Keaton.” (“I mean, we were supposed to be about the same age,” he writes in that note,  “so how could our lives be so different?”) Jonathan’s mental illness started as a child, “J’s nightmares have gotten worse. He wakes up screaming. He tells me about people who turn into monsters.”

Dad: “I taught [Jonathan] to play solitaire (so he wouldn’t bug me). He was so happy I was teaching him how to play the game that it made me like [him] less than I did already.

It is also the story of an abused wife who wanted to protect herself and her child but couldn’t seem to find the power to do so.

“Dear Mom and Dad,
Do you ever wish that the sperm and the egg that became me wasn’t me? I’m sure that you must have been expecting someone else from all of that pleasure.”

“Dear Mom and Dad,
I woke up screaming that one time because of all that eye gunk holding my eyelashes and eyelids together. I couldn’t open my eyes up. I thought that I had gone blind.”

A sad book with a great structure and good writing. Comes with my recommendation.

CHRIS RUTCHER

Concept: 18 year old boy is given less than a year to live. Does he spend it puking sick taking chemo and radiation? Not Ben Wolf. He threatened his doctor with legal action if he broke confidentiality. Ben is 18 and in the last year of high school.  He wants to go out in a blaze of glory. He joined the foot ball team that his younger but bigger brother quarterbacks. And does score some winning touchdowns. The first person he tells is the coach a family friend. The book reaches far beyond the main theme into the need for  education reform, sexual abuse of children from the point of view of an abuser as well as a young person who was abused, racism and more.

DEADLINES raises many questions. Well worth the read for youth and adults. Great start for discussions.