Our Quiet Growing Time

Twenty-two years ago Detective Frank Mackey's heart was broken on the night that he thought he was going to run off to England with his childhood sweetheart. But Rosie never showed. Instead, she left a 'Dear John' letter for him and disappeared out of his life forever. Frank never went back to his home on Faithful Place, unwilling to face his dysfunctional family without Rosie just a few houses away. Now Rosie's suitcase has been found in a derelict house on Faithful Place and 41-year-old Frank is on the trail to discover what happened, finally, to the love of his youthful life. His trail leads him back to Faithful Place, the street so filled with memories and demons that he hoped he'd never have to return.  Faithful Place shows Tana French at her best, back in the groove after the somewhat disappointing The Likeness . Frank was introduced in The Likeness as Cassie's boss from Undercover. He is a renegade. His moral code as a cop is pretty skewed; he...

 In which The Librarian , LindszerWest, and RachelKiwi continue the reread of the gothic classic. The Librarian asks and I answer: 1. Women and illness. So often in this book women are called ill when in reality they're just really emotional. But then, sometimes there seem to be real symptoms of sickness such as the Lintons getting sick and dying from Cathy's fever... What's up with that? Just a viewpoint of weak women's constitutions of the time or is Bronte saying something more? Did you know that the words uterus and hysteria come from the same root? When a woman was called 'hysterical' it meant she was suffering from a 'woman's issue,' the source of her malady being her uterus (naturally!). So I think this view of women as 'ill' is just an example of the cultural and historical views toward women that existed centuries before and decades after the writing of WH . But if anyone deserves the mantle 'hysterica...

Book Club of Two presents Wuthering Heights. The Librarian and I decided to do a re-read of Emily Brontë's only novel for the month of November. The Journalist (LindszerWest)  decided to join us and has become an honorary member of Book Club of Two, swelling our numbers temporarily to three. The Librarian and I each posed three questions to the group about Chapters 1-8. Go here if you'd like to see the full reading schedule. It's not too late to join us on the moors! The Librarian Asks and I answer: In this section we see explanation for Heathcliff's personality...But what about Cathy? How was her mean girl attitude formed? Does the lack of explanation point toward Joseph's religious belief of women's innate wickedness? Or do you see circumstances that caused Cathy to be such a b*tch? Madame Librarian, I'm shocked. Such language! Truthfully, there is no other word for Cathy. It's the word that pops into my head everytime she a...

Prior to this moment in my life, I've had a strict no re-reading policy. My motto has always been "So many books, so little time," so clearly, I have no time to waste for rereads. I had a sweatshirt sporting this slogan that I wore exactly once to school in sixth grade. That's all the further I'd like to go with that story; the pain is still raw. ;) But I'm glad I revisited Gone with the Wind . You get a lot more out of a book when you're 27 than you did when you were 13.  You know the story: it's the tale of how one Southern woman survives the turbulence of the Civil War and the years following. What struck me this time was that Margaret Mitchell wrote an epic 1000+ page tome with a protagonist who was detestable. Name a bad character trait: Scarlett's got it. She's lied, cheated, stolen, committed adultery in everything but the final act, wished death upon others, hated, and murdered. She's cruel, greedy, selfish, mercenary, manip...

There's something comforting about the cadence of fairy tales... the rhythm and repetition give you advanced warning of the story's direction and remind me of the beloved stories of my childhood. The Robber Bridgegroom is a modern American interpretation of the Grimm Brothers tale. Before I read Welty's version, I printed out a copy of the original (well, not original, because I don't read German, but you know) and it was extremely grotesque, as one can only expect from the grim Brothers Grimm. The story featured cannibalism and the mutilation of young maidens, but luckily Welty left out most of the blood and guts in her telling. Set along the Old Natchez Trace trail in Mississippi, TRB is a cross between a fairy tale and an American tall-tale. Many of the old staples we come to expect from a fairy tale were included, but some with a twist: a beautiful lonely blonde maiden who sits by her window at night and sings about finding her true love (but...

I thought that I was tired of the whole paranormal young adult novel thing. I loved the Twilight series, but since then, it seems that everything is werewolves and vampires all the time. So when Sara loaned me this series against my will, I thought, I’ll just read 5 or 6 pages, tell her I tried it and that it wasn’t for me. Ahem, 900 pages later…. Sam is a boy who turns into a wolf every winter; the cold makes him shed his human body. Grace has always been fascinated by the wolves living in the woods beyond her backyard… one yellow-eyed wolf in particular. When a wounded boy shows up on her back deck, naked and bleeding, with the same yellow eyes as her beloved wolf, it doesn’t take long for Grace to realize the truth. And because these two have shared a connection for years, ever since Sam-as-wolf saved Grace from a wolf attack, they jump right into a heated romance. I’ve gotten so sick of the whole supernatural element in literature lately, bec...

In the midst of some tedious and torturous novels, The Blue Castle was the perfect bit of relief. Last weekend Danielle and I watched Anne of Green Gables and I was reminded of the wonderful L.M. Montgomery. I found a used LMM book online that looked like the perfect weekend antidote to the evil Thomas Wolfe. This one jumped out at me because the description included a "good-girl" heroine and her love interest: a mysterious neighbor who is reputed to be a bank robber, an embezzler, even a murderer (yes, yes, very predictable of me, I know. I do love the bad boys). Valancy Stirling is the good-girl heroine, a spinster from Ontario, Canada. She has lived, for her 29 years, under the oppression of her mean-spirited and image-conscious mother and aunts and cousins and uncles who mock her spinsterhood and repress her confidence and spirit. She is a homely invalid, whose only moments of happiness are when she retreats into her vibrant imagination to her "Blue C...