Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

This is a bit of a hot book right now and is my selection for my book club for this year.  It won't be on our book club schedule for a few months yet, but I wanted to give it a read early to see how I felt about it.

Rachel is a woman who rides the train from the suburbs into London every day.  Taking the same trains every day, looking out the windows, she starts to see some familiar scenes each day.  One area she likes to keep an eye on is the street where she formerly lived with her husband before their marriage ended.  A few doors down, a new couple has moved in.  She often sees them out on their terrace and has invented a history for them.  One day she sees something amiss at their house, and when she reads in the news that the woman who lives in that house has gone missing, she feels she needs to get involved.  But not only has she invented a history for these people, Rachel is also an alcoholic who often has blackouts where she can't remember anything that happens to her for a period of time.  So can her information be trusted?  Will her desire to help only cause problems to the investigation?

This is a fun, fast-paced book with some good twists and turns.  It's not going to go down in history as one of the great thrillers of all time, but it is a fun, exciting read.  It is being called the next Gone Girl, but I can't really comment on that, because I haven't read that one.  It's a quick read and I think you'll probably enjoy it.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

It has been a long time since I finished a book in a day.  But with this short little book I managed to get through it today while Becca was napping.

This is the selection for my book club's meeting next week and it was an absolute delight.  I had no idea what the book was about, but I fell in love with it right away.

The book is a series of letters that passed back and forth between Helene Hanff in New York and Frank Doel, a bookseller in London.  Helene sees an advertisement for his shop in a magazine and begins what becomes a 20-year, transatlantic correspondence.  In the process a friendship develops between the two, along with his wife and other members of the shop's staff.  She sends gifts to help them through the post-WWII rationing in England and often plans visits which always fall through for various reasons.

Both correspondents are fun and witty and their letters are delightful.  Their discussions of antique books are fascinating (especially when her dislike of any sort of fiction is shattered by reading Pride and Prejudice).

It is 97 pages long, with some of those pages being short letters.  It is a very light, very quick read.  I highly recommend it for an easy, fluffy read.  You won't regret it.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

I have mixed emotions about this book.  I didn't love it as I read it, but the more I think about it now that I'm done, it's growing on me.

This is the story of Efrieda and Yolandi, Mennonite sisters from Winnipeg.  Now grown women, Elf and Yoli live very different lives.  Elf is a world-renowned concert pianist, Yoli is the author of a somewhat successful series of rodeo books.  Elf has a very successful, happy relationship, Yoli has a string of broken relationships and shame about the fact that she "sleeps around".  Elf is suicidal, Yoli is determined to save her.

This is the story of their sisterhood.  Looking back on their childhood in a strict Mennonite community, Yoli (the narrator) looks at their lives and what brought them to where they are today.  Elf has made several attempts to take her own life, and each time Yoli is by her side, encouraging her to fight on.  So when Elf asks Yoli to take her to Switzerland to help her end her life legally, on her own terms, Yoli is torn.

This is a story of love, of sisters, of mental illness, of the difficulty of living when you don't want to live anymore.  And what is love, to allow your sister to go, even to help her die, or to ask her to keep living for your own sake?

Miriam Toews own father and sister committed suicide, so this book has a lot of her own story in it, which makes it more difficult to read at times.

But with all that being said, there are times when this book is laugh-out-loud funny.  Yoli is a very funny character and her way of expressing herself was humourous, even in the sad situations in which she found herself.  She is a very likeable, endearing character.

I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'd ever read it again.