Review: One Moment, One Morning, by Sarah Rayner

I had a really hard time reading this one. Simon, only fifty-one years young, dies suddenly one morning on the train to work. He leaves behind a wife, Karen, and two young children (now you see why it was a tough read), but they are not the only people touched by his loss. Karen’s best friend, Anna, and Lou, a stranger who was also on the train that morning, find that their lives will also be forever changed. Though Karen, Anna, and Lou each have something different to learn from the loss, they ultimately find themselves bound together in a friendship forged during the most trying of times. While the subject matter tends toward the trite, Rayner’s writing is concise and contemporary, bringing her characters and their emotions to life in so realistic and believable a way as to avoid the cliche. Her portrayal of emotion is authentic, even to the point of being painful to read, but this story is as much about relationships, hope, and second chances as it is about death and loss, making the most valuable lesson of all that we each have only one life to live. A difficult read, but a worthwhile one for sure.

This was book 45 on my way to 52.

Review: Greasewood Creek, by Pamela Steele

This book was pure poetry. I started reading it like a standard novel and found myself a little befudled, but a few chapters in I caught on and really started to enjoy the language. The story was a bit depressing, though. Avery is just a child when her younger sister dies, followed close after by her father’s desertion and her mother’s slide into alcoholism. Surrounded by family and friends she is able to stay and grow up on the Oregon ranch where she was born. As an adult she finds constancy there, but cannot escape the guilt she feels over her sister’s death. She hopes for happiness finally in the child she is expecting with her life partner, Davis, but when their newborn son dies the same forces of grief that tore apart her childhood engulf her again. Avery’s inability to escape the past is palpable in this fragmented narrative that mixes the present with flashbacks to her childhood and teen years, and Steele’s poetic style brings the beautiful Oregon ranch setting to life. Steele has depicted the depression, grief, and guilt of living after a loss with expert clarity, making this a powerful and faithful story of finding the inner strength to move forward and be reborn.

Book 44 on my way to 52.

Review: The Fallback Plan, by Leigh Stein

Thanks to an awesome friend I've gotten a gig reviewing books for the ALA's Book List magazine. They send me four or five books every month, I read them and write a short review that will be published in the print ad online version of their magazine. It doesn't bring in much money, but it's a dream project for me—checking out new books and getting to talk about them? Sign me up. I'm allowed to share my reviews here after they've been published in the magazine, so I'll be posting them here with a few changes.
The Fallback Plan was interesting. I found it hard to get into, but warmed up to it after a time. The book is about, Esther who graduates from Northwestern University and finds herself jobless, directionless, and moving back in with her parents. When her mother finds her a job caring for the four year old daughter of a neighboring family she grudgingly agrees. But the family lost an infant child earlier in the year, and Esther, struggling with her own depression, finds herself caring for both the girl and the grieving mother. As she also navigates through romantic relationships with the girl’s father and a friend her own age we witness her inner conflict and personal growth. Although too referential to be as timeless, this well developed coming of age story is in line with Judy Blume’s Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Forever. Esther’s struggle with clinical depression might alienate some readers, but like Blume’s characters she is authentic and likable. Written with witty humor and an informal, contemporary language, Stein’s debut novel will resonate with a new generation of students for whom college is no longer the final step on the road to adulthood.

Book 41 on my way to 52