"What Alice Forgot": A Decade to Do-over

It isn't summer yet, but Liane Moriarty's 2008 "What Alice Forgot" made me dream about the warm days spent on beach sands with a page turner that is funny, touching, poignant and full of love drama and dilemmas.  Liane Moriarty whose "Big Little Lies" and "The Husband's Secret" propelled her to best seller success, shows heart and substance with her story of Alice, a 39 year old woman who falls and hits her head during a spin class and loses an entire decade's worth of memories.

When Alice regains consciousness, she believes that she is 29, pregnant with her first child, and madly in love with her husband, Nick.  Unfortunately for her, she discovers that she is a hyperactive PTO mom whose marriage is on the brink of divorce who has become estranged from her sister and her neighborhood.  Obsessed instead with possessions, her schedule, and her workouts, Alice's 39 year old self is a far cry from who she was and believed she would become a decade earlier.

In typical Moriarty form, she shines a sinister light on the state of the modern day suburbanites - harried parents who are too self-obsessed, too busy, too overworked, and too over committed to everything except for their marriages or their children.  Considered a book club favorite, this novel asks important questions like who do you think you will become in 10 years, or what has drastically changed in the past decade of your life? What would you like to change if you got a decade do-over?

The strength of this novel lies in the slow recovery of Alice's memories.  She encounters "friends" who she doesn't know, indifference where there was once warmth, a schedule that frightens her, a house that seems unfamiliar, and children she has never met.  The most touching aspect of the book comes in the form of her fragile relationship with her estranged husband.  What happened to her marriage? It's a slow discovery of the facts of her life and who she (and her husband) have turned out to be.

I raced through this book, and found myself wanting to shut out the rest of the world to read it. Moriarty has mastered the art of making her reader turn the page.  But this isn't all fluff and soap opera amnesia antics; she's a smart writer who crafts characters who are both strong and vulnerable, real and relatable, who fall apart and grow in the span of 300 pages.  I enjoyed this book more than "Big Little Lies" (which I also liked), and MUCH more than "The Husband's Secret" (which I found a bit bland and too sinister).

Each of Moriarty's novels, although addictive and easy to read, bring up big life questions like how do we mend our mistakes and broken relationships? What makes a strong marriage fall apart in a decade? What is important to hold onto and what is okay to let go? It is a perfect book club book and a perfect pre-summer read to get you dreaming of warm sunshine and toting the perfect page turner to your sandy, summertime oasis.

"I'll Be Seeing You": Letters, Love, and Loss

My friend Rose told me that her experience reading "I'll Be Seeing You" by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan (who never actually met each other while writing this book) was like finding a box of letters in her grandmother's attic and reading them with a cup of tea in hand - learning about the past and being privy to secrets and the stories shared from a friendship forged by longing. 

"I'll be Seeing You" follows the 1943-1945 correspondence between Rita Vincenzo, a sensible woman from Iowa whose husband and son are both away serving in WWII, and Glory Whitehall, a wealthy young mother from  Massachusetts whose husband is also in the war. Their letter writing begins after a 4-H meeting urged  women who were waiting for their loved ones to return from the war to find comfort in other women who could understand their circumstances.  The women develop a strong friendship as they share their respective stories of their families, and how they try to pass the days as they wait for life to return to a new sense of normal.  Their worry over their loved ones, their fear of receiving the dreaded death telegram, their daily joys and sorrows bond them together and help each of them overcome bouts of despair and depression as the war continues.  

Glory writes about the birth of a baby girl, parenting a rambunctious toddler (who contracts an illness that leaves him a shell of his former self), and mostly with the intensity of her relationship with her husband's (and her) best friend, Levi who was asked to "look after" Glory in her husband's absence.  Rita writes about her loneliness, her wicked neighbor, her son's secret girlfriend, and her best friend's relationship with a handsome stranger with a shady past.  Each of their stories bring them closer together and gives them a sense of comfort that there is someone sharing their pain and joy.  Along with the more personal stories they share, Rita also gives Glory gardening advice for her victory garden to grow in her seaside climate and they each share war time recipes like Tomato Soup Cake and Mock Veal Cutlets.  

What this book did for me was show me a very personal side of WWII that is often forgotten - what the women did while they waited.  1943 differed greatly from our modern day society where many women work outside of the home and enjoy choices that women in the 1940s could never dream of.  The women then relied on their men, but in their men's absence what many of the women learned is that they are strong beyond measure - especially when they could help each other.  In one letter Glory adds, "P.S. I love being a woman.  A woman among amazing women.  Women who understand just how much we need one another." 

It's true.  

The power of women's friendships and connections through tragedy and triumph is a beautiful thing.  Women connect in different ways then men connect - ask any woman who has a life long friend about their soul connection with that woman.  Ask any woman about the special women in her life and how important those bonds are for her - the talks, the sharing, the nights out spilling their hearts to each other over bottles of wine or meeting for coffee just to connect face to face and share in each others' company.  

This book made me want to connect with all my best friends.  It made me want to sit down and write good old fashioned letters (not Facebook messages or text messages, but real in depth letter writing).  Our best friends are the ones who make us feel connected to something larger than ourselves, who tell us the truth even when we don't want to hear it, who bring us back from the brink of destroying ourselves, and who help us make sense out of the world even when nothing makes sense. They are our truest allies in wartime and in peacetime. 

"All the Light We Cannot See": Amazing. Simply Amazing.

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever." 

In the past year, I've read about 100 books.  I could argue, that Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" is the best one that I've read, and even more than that, maybe one of the best books I have ever read.  There's so much to love about this book - the short intriguing chapters (many are only a page and a half long), the poetic writing style that is both engaging and challenging, the characters who are now lodged in my brain forever, the perspective of WWII that Doerr presents with the two separate story lines which are not typical, but show another side of the war that I never contemplated - the side of choices that people had to make in wartime, or maybe it's Doerr's superb storytelling ability. Even when he switches back and forth in time sequence, and storyline from chapter to chapter, he keeps his reader with him.  When I fall into a book that I don't want to finish because I don't want to lose the characters, when I am both horrified and mesmerized by what I read on every page, when my heart races as the characters endure hardships and terrifying situations, and when I am somehow transported to another time and place - I know I am reading masterpiece.

After I finished the last page of "All the Light We Cannot See" I said, "Wow."  I was home alone and although I had about 1,000,000 other things to do, I needed to keep reading the last 100 pages of the book to find out what happened to Werner Phennig and Marie-Laure LeBlanc. The story opens in Saint-Malo, a small (and dramatic) walled city in Brittany that has been occupied by German soldiers and as we find out in the subscript at the beginning of the novel, Saint-Malo "was almost totally destroyed by fire . . . Of the 865 buildings within the walls, only 182 remained standing and all were damaged to some degree." Marie-Laure, who is in her attic, hears something dropping from planes and with her acute senses due to her blindness, discerns that these are leaflets because she can smell the fresh ink.  In the same town at the same time, Werner, a young German soldier who specializes in radios, is trapped in the basement rubble of a nearby hotel.  These two characters will intersect in magical ways throughout the novel.

Marie-Laure lives with her father who is the key keeper at a museum in Paris.  At age 6, Marie-Laure loses her eyesight and her father relentlessly helps her to cope with the adversities she faces as a young blind girl.  He constructs elaborate scale models of their neighborhood for her to study and encourages her to find her way and lead their walks, so she can learn independence.  He also constructs intricate puzzle boxes for her to solve.  When the war begins, their world,  like the worlds of so many others, changes drastically.  The museum owner entrusts one of the most sought after stones in the world, The Sea of Flames, with trusted employees from the museum; three fakes are distributed and one real stone.  None of the employees know which they are carrying, and Marie-Laure's father has one in his possession.  They flee Paris and end up with Etienne, Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle in Saint Malo.

The parallel storyline belongs to Werner Phennig, a snow haired orphan who has an uncanny knack for constructing and repairing radios.  Word of his amazing skills reaches a german officer who is in need of a repairman for his expensive radio.  When Werner fixes what no other person was able to fix, the german officer recommends that Werner should apply to a Nazi training school for young boys.  Werner, who fears succumbing to the fate that his dad suffered - being crushed while mining, accepts the offer and is transported into a "kill or be killed" world where logic disappears, friendships are trumped by violence, and being special or different are looked upon as weaknesses.  Dr. Hauptman who mentors Werner during his time at the school tells the students, "Life if chaos, gentlemen. And what we represent is an ordering to that chaos. Even down to the genes. We are ordering the evolution of a species.  Winnowing out the inferior, the unruly, the chaff."  The whiter the hair, the bluer the eyes, the faster you can run, the crueler you can be earn higher marks than compassion and artistry.  Werner soon learns that hardening his heart is his best defense.

As the book progresses and the war intensifies the lives of these two characters criss cross and meld together the past innocence of Werner's youth when he and his sister Jutta would listen to the radio and hear a professor's voice who talked about light, "The brain is locked in total darkness . . . And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement.  So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?" and the evils that overshadow wartime for both soldiers and civilians.  Connected by radios and terror, violence and survival, Werner and Marie-Laure meet and in a way save each other.

The title, "All The Light We Cannot See" takes on so many meanings throughout this book - from the radio broadcasts, to Marie-Laure's blindness, to being trapped in an attic or in a basement buried in the rubble from the collapsed Hotel of Bees, but the real lightness in this book was the airy way in which Doerr led the reader through his intensely lyrical style.  Each short chapter reads like it's own vignette, but never feels choppy in the scope of the sweeping novel.  Doerr proves that he is a master of storytelling, and a craftsman of words.  I literally at times got a bit teary eyed with how beautiful the writing was in this book.

If it's been awhile since you've lost yourself in a fiction masterpiece, it's time to pick up "All The Light We Cannot See."

"The Children Act": Why have I never read Ian McEwan until now?

It's been awhile since I've read a book that led me to openly debate with my husband in the evenings. I'm embarrassed to admit as an avid book enthusiast that I've never read a book by Ian McEwan before this one which I am pretty sure was on every single "Best Books of 2014" list.  I saw the movie "Atonement," but seeing a movie and reading an author's style do not correlate.  At first I was a bit put off by the stuffy, pretentious quality of the writing (it read more like a movie script to me than a novel), but that quickly dissipated as I worked my way into the daily dilemmas that high court Judge Fiona Maye faced and in particular the case of Andrew, a 17 year old Jehovah's Witness suffering from leukemia whose family refused to give him a blood transfusion based on religious reasons.

In the lead up to this court case, the reader learns that Fiona, age 59, is a judge of impeccable reasoning skills.  She is highly respected in her field and the court cases that she faces - from conjoined twins who must be separated in order to save the life of one even if the devoutly Catholic parents don't want to go against God's will, and divorce settlements involving Jewish parents, often relate in some way to religion.  With each case she hears, she uses sound reason and logic to decide what is best for each child involved using The Children Act (1989) as her guide: "When a court determines any question with respect to . . . the upbringing of a child . . . the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.” - SECTION I (A).  

The backdrop of her reason and logic filled days in court is her emotional and personal distress at home as her husband, Jack, seeks her approval to have an affair with a much younger woman.  Fiona is both disgusted and horrified with Jack's request even if he chooses to blame her for his need to stray citing her emotional and physical distance as the main reasons he wants to have a heated love affair with someone else. Their icy relationship drips with tension and betrayal.  Both sides are hurting; in the case of love, logic and reason often don't count.

But the law will not wait for personal problems at home. Andrew's case must be decided almost immediately due to the severity of his cancer and the necessity for a blood transfusion.  In order to get a clearer understanding of his physical condition and his personal wishes, Fiona visits him in the hospital to understand why he and his family are refusing treatment. After this visit, Fiona comes to the conclusion that Andrew's welfare is not the paramount consideration of his family and his church and overrules their denial of the transfusion, forcing Andrew to receive a life saving treatment.

What happens from here both startled and confused me, but the delicacy of the situations presented in the book made me think long after I closed the cover in the evenings, and stayed with me after I finished the book.  I brought up the dilemmas to my husband over dinner and was surprised by his answers. So many questions are presented in this book: Whose fault is the loss of love? Who gets to ultimately make the decision about the welfare of a child? An adult? A relationship? What happens when we are unable to act in the best welfare of a child or ourselves? What role does religion play in our lives? What ultimately gives our lives meaning?

These are big questions and even if the critics agree that this book doesn't fit in the realm of most of McEwan's books, much exists in it's short length that can pose huge life questions without easy answers which make it an excellent selection for a book club (at least a book club that talks about the books they choose).  As a McEwan virgin, I was impressed with his ability to humanize, criticize and stay neutral all at once.  Even with the seeming pretentiousness of the language at first, this book is worth the read, worth the debate, and worth the title of one of the best books of 2014.

"The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry": The Journey to Find Meaning in a Life of Drudgery

"You'd think walking should be the simplest thing . . . Just a question of putting one foot in front of the other.  But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things are that are supposed to be instinctive really are." 

I once hiked for 6 hours on the Appalachian Trail.  When I returned to my car, I felt relaxed, hungry and mildly exhausted.  During my hiking days, I would run into "through hikers" who intended to hike the 2,200 mile journey that stretches from Georgia to Maine.  They looked feral, and thin but intently focused on their ending point, and that's how Harold Fry, the unlikely hero in Rachel Joyce's book, "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" looks in the middle of his journey when he decides to let go of all material things - even money and tough out his journey by trusting in the universe to provide what he needs. 

Harold Fry, a recently retired man who lives in a small English village with his overly critical and hardened wife, Maureen receives a letter from Queenie Hennessy written in shaky handwriting that says she is in hospice care and wanted to say goodbye.  Harold, unsure of how to respond to his former work mate and friend, writes a quick reply letter.  As he goes to put his letter in the mail, he decides to keep walking.  He makes it to the post office, and decides to keep walking.  Without telling anyone (including his pinched wife, Maureen), he starts walking the over 600 mile journey to hand deliver the letter to Queenie himself.  He alerts the hospice directors that he is walking to say goodbye to Queenie and politely asks her to wait for his arrival.  

Thus begins Harold's journey of self discovery as he spans the English countryside encountering interesting characters who want to help him, talk to him and eventually follow his lead and journey with him. Harold faces numerous challenges on his walk to Queenie.  First, he contends with his health issues.  Walking so much at first causes bruises and aches and pains that Harold is unaccustomed to in his soft life of tea and sitting on a couch.  He struggles against the weather, his physical condition, and hunger, but mostly along his journey he struggles with self-doubt (Is he doing the right thing? Does it even matter? Why is he walking in the first place? Can he really walk over 600 miles?). Even more pervasive by the end of the novel,  Harold struggles with the demons of his past and the realizations about what his life has become.  

In many ways, we are all Harold Fry, struggling against ourselves in our journey through life.  Unlike Harold Fry, many people are too afraid to face our fears and travel through them to annihilate them and live more fully.  Most of us aren't drawn by our instincts or by the internal drive that tells us that we can accomplish whatever we want to accomplish regardless of the odds.  Most of us don't put our trust in the universe to provide us with what we need. 

I thought often of the Henry Ford quotation while reading this book, "Whether you think you can or think you can't - you're right." Jodie, from my book club, asked the question, "Could it even be possible for someone like Harold to take this journey?"  My immediate and heart felt response was, "Absolutely!" We can all accomplish so much more than we believe we can.  Just like Harold, it might not always be clear why we need to do the things that are the most unlikely, but if we believe we can, we might just meet with success and overcome whatever plagues us from our past or in our present lives.  

One of the nuns who works in Queenie's hospice center tells Harold that his journey to see Queenie and his respectful request for her to wait for him to arrive to say goodbye is "a rather unusual kind of healing." She goes on to say, " I don't know how you came up with it.  But maybe it's what the world needs.  A little less sense, and a little more faith." 

That sounds like good advice to me.  

If you are looking for an inspiring book about an unlikely hero overcoming impossible odds on a journey of healing and self discovery, Rachel Joyce might just be your new favorite author and "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" might become your new favorite book. 

"Big Little Lies:" Add it to the list of books you can't put down

Last December I read Liane Moriarty's book "The Husband's Secret."  Although it was highly recommended and I flew through it, I wasn't all that enthralled with it and discounted it as chick lit with a bit of a sinister edge.  I loved the pop culture references thrown in and the converging of the different characters. Moriarty also did a great job of incorporating the themes that we never truly know anyone, that we all have secrets to keep, and we remain blind to truths that we don't want to know about those that we love.

Moriarty's 6th novel, "Big Little Lies" reads much like "The Husband's Secret," but something about it made me think more, read faster and ultimately feel more satisfied at the end.  It could be that I liked the characters better, or possibly that Moriarty set up the mystery even better in this book. The mystery revolves around suburban moms in an idyllic Australian beach community called Pirriwee Penisula who all have children in the same school.  From the very first chapter, the reader knows that something terrible happened on Trivia Night at the school and that it involves one of the main characters.  But who? Could it be the outspoken and stiletto heel wearing, Madeline who on her 40th birthday twists her ankle only to be rescued by the new mom in town? Could it be the new, young, single mom in town, Jane, whose mousy exterior hides her devastating secrets about her son, Ziggy's real father? Could it possibly involve the devastatingly beautiful and wealthy Celeste who appears to have the perfect husband and perfect life? Maybe it's Bonnie, the peace loving yoga instructor who is the new wife of Madeline's ex-husband, Nathan (who just happened to walk out on Madeline and their 14 month old daughter).

As the seemingly mundane situations that arise in normal life - a bully in the classroom, invitations to a birthday party, a book club, and a school fundraising function - become way more twisted and sinister, the truths about the character's lives and hearts tumble out with tragic consequences.

I had to know what happened in the gossipy town that turned ugly (and bloody) amidst the parents who dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and Elvis to attend an annual trivia night.  Without food to sop up their copious amounts of alcohol, tempers flared and situations that may have seemed trivial (on trivia night . . . get it?) turned deadly.

Would guys like this book? No.  Is it Chick Lit? Yes, but it's Chick Lit with a backbone.  It isn't just as the cover suggests, an exploding, neon colored lollipop, and it's worth reading and becoming entrenched in until the very last page (honestly, if you are looking for a book that you won't put down until you get to the end, read it).  Liane Moriarty knows how to capture her readers and keep them guessing until the very last page and do so without over-sentimentalizing. She also masters the art of throwing in subtle human truths (without hitting the reader over the head with them) in the midst of the soap opera scene of suburban moms squabbling.  That's a gift.

If you are looking for books that you can't put down to either read during the cold, long winter, or to give as gifts (or maybe, if you are lucky enough, to take on a winter vacation), here are some of my other recommendations:

YA Literature:
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Memoirs:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout
Gone Feral by Novella Carpenter (I'm reading this right now, and I can't put it down.  It was actually hard for me to take a break to write this blog post!)
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Books that have romance and substance:
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Me Before You by  Jojo Moyes
One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
The Rosie Project by Graeme Stimison

Happy Reading this winter, everyone!  If you have a book suggestion for me (something I won't be able to put down), I'd love it!

"We Were Liars": Dark, Mysterious and Incredibly Addictive

I waited almost two months to get E. Lockhart's highly touted YA book "We Were Liars" from the library.  When I finally brought it home, and cracked open the cover, I couldn't get up until I finished. I closed the book after the shocking ending and still couldn't believe it.  When I picked my girls up from school that day, my thoughts about the book still churned around in my head and my older daughter got worried.  "Are you okay Mommy?" I replied, "I just can't believe how the book I just finished ended."  She asked me what happened, but I didn't want to tell her because it's a surprise and you never want to solve the mystery before someone else has the opportunity to discover it on her own.

"We Were Liars" revolves around the privileged, cashmere sweater, overly wealthy Sinclair family who own a private island called Beechwood off the coast of Massachusetts. Parallels abound between King Lear and the grandfather who rules the island wielding control over his three useless and ungrateful daughters who drink too much, can't hold onto love and can't hold down jobs.  They all fight to win their father's approval to secure their inheritance.  Stuck in the middle of the sister rivalries are the oldest grandchildren who are nicknamed the liars, Cadence (Cady), Mirren, Johnny and in summer 8 they are joined by a sorta step brother / step cousin, Gat who plays the role of Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights", the dark, penetrating outsider who lacks the approval of the patriarch of the wealthy family.  Gat and Cady form an unbreakable and somewhat forbidden love connection.  The liars entertain themselves on the island while their moms bicker over money and what they are owed by the grandfather.

And then, in summer 15, things get a bit cray cray.  Cadence washes up on the beach in her underwear with a case of amnesia and wicked migraines.  The next summer, she is forbidden to return to Beechwood without reason since the doctors want her to remember the awful events of summer 15 on her own.  She struggles with depression and claims that her new boyfriend is percocet.  She fruitlessly reaches out to her fellow liars.  When she turns 17, she is allowed to return to Beechwood and she starts to remember what really happened summer 15.

Maybe some of you are groaning and eye rolling at the amnesia aspect of the book which seems a bit like a bad subplot in Days of Our Lives, but something about E. Lockhart's edgy style and deft writing works with Cadence's gradual memory recovery.

There is way more to love about this book than to not love.  Even with the time shifts to the past, and the watery characterization of the moms and the littles (the younger grandchildren who form an amorphous clump of people rather than contain their own distinct roles), the storyline makes you want to find out what happened and why so much has changed on the seemingly ideal Beechwood.

"We Were Liars" will make you guess, remember summer beach loves, think about being 15 while parents are busy drinking and talking about life, dream about feeling rebellious and ponder feeling lost and feeling even more lost when the truths about life are slowly revealed.  It's a book worth reading or giving to your favorite YA reader.

"My Accidental Jihad": The Complex Journey of the Marriage of Two Cultures

“According to Ismail, the prophet Muhammad taught that the greatest jihad, or struggle, of our lives is not the one that takes place on the battlefield but the one that takes place within our hearts - the struggle, as I understood it, to manifest humility, wisdom, and compassion. Ramadan threw me into my own accidental jihad, forcing me to wrestle with my intolerance and self-absorption. And I had been losing ground in this battle, forgetting my husband’s intentions and focusing instead on the petty ways I was inconvenienced by his practice.”

When aspiring journalist, Krista Bremer, turned in her California surfing lifestyle where the next wave took precedence over material wealth or job security, for an educational opportunity in North Carolina, she had no idea that she'd meet her future husband while doing her daily run.  She had no idea that her future husband would be way older than her, have yellowing teeth, nor that he would be a Libyan.

In Bremer's memoir, "My Accidental Jihad", she uncovers what those of us who are married already understand - marriage is hard work.  But, the work that Bremer and her husband, Ismail, encounter possesses it's own complications based on faith (he's Islamic, she's a non practicing Christian) and culture (he haggles over the price of a wedding ring, she just wants to pay what the salesperson asks and is mortified that her husband would even consider arguing the price).

The power in the book stemmed from Bremer's internal grappling with what she loved about Ismail (he is a warm place for her that she didn't know she needed), and what she can't understand or tolerate about him (his need to strictly follow Ramadan restrictive practices which she calls "Ramathon" or his insistence on living on what we need rather than living in excess).

Their accidental love story begins with a love of running on the trails around Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a coincidental meeting at a market where he shows her how amazing fresh tomatoes can be.  They hook up even though he is everything that she never wanted.  He lives in a sparsely furnished attic apartment with meager possessions.  He seems to love cleaning the counters.  He's much older than she is (and he even has, gasp, wrinkles which are taboo in the California landscape she's used to which worships at the alter of youth and false appearances).  After Bremer accidentally gets pregnant, they decide to get married on purpose and begin the precarious balancing act of starting a life together as two relative strangers who know little about each other's histories, dreams and desires.

She traverses the marriage missteps, but is always able to eventually see things from Ismail's perspective like when they are on a used car lot because she no longer wants to be embarrassed by his 1987 Toyota.  Giving into Krista's demands to get a new car, he tells her that all the cars are the same to him.  To her, there was a difference between a shiny new car and a 1987 Toyota.  She reasons, “In that instant, I glimpsed the lifelong challenge of our marriage: I assumed we saw the same thing when we observed the world, but our interpretations of what we were looking at would never be the same.”

At times Bremer's overflowing, flowery language was a bit much. Like when she described her pregnancy nightmares: "At night I dreamed of the taut skin of my belly tearing like tissue paper against the weight of this somersaulting body, of frantically tucking tiny limbs back inside as hot blood spilled through slippery fingers." At other times, she doesn't give enough information about Ismail's history (maybe she doesn't know it?) or about his present situation. He comes off sounding more like an Americanize peasant rather than an older, sophisticated, PhD student who lives simply. She sometimes goes for an easy victory of how Ismail's view of the world and his culture with it's emphasis on family raising, spiritual fulfillment, and an aversion to material possessions are infinitely better than the "thing crazed," lack of faith, selfish, workaholic Americans.

Even with the chronological leaps, the story of Ismail and Krista sustained my interest and even invoked a few tears. Who hasn't had marital strife or communication problems with their spouse who at times feels like a foreigner? Who hasn't questioned the in-law's practices or cringed at the thought of being left alone at a dinner table while the in-law relatives spoke in what seemed like a foreign language? The only difference here is that Krista really did marry a man from a different culture which becomes painfully clear when they travel to Libya to meet Ismail's family. They bring their 5 year old daughter, Aliya, along on the trip, and Krista deals with the language barrier, culture barrier and with her early pregnancy pains as well.

Marriage can often be a wrestling match of intolerance of the other's point of view or self-absorption. It's a precarious balancing act to love the differences between us and our partners and not let them tear us apart. Bremer's book "My Accidental Jihad" shows that marriages between even the most dissimilar people can work when they treat each other with respect, and celebrate rather than vilify the differences between them with humility, wisdom and compassion. That's the real magic behind marriages and love stories that last.

A search for a father, a search for self

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

 Our parents create a huge part of our identity.  From their personalities to the environment they make our home, to the way they punish and reward, to the way they are involved or not involved in our lives.  Parents help us to create our sense of self.  But other things help us to reinvent who we are, or become a different version of our selves.

I remember this class I took at the University of Minnesota which was about the construction of self and how our memory plays a key role in who we believe we are, what we know about ourselves and our identity.  It was an Honors Seminar with a long gray haired professor and only 8 girls.  Every week, one of us was assigned to lead discussions and to bring in some sort of morning snack.  It was an 8am class and I remember the other girls struggling against the early wake up time.  They seemed slug like, puffy and gelatinous in the morning.  I, on the other hand, am a morning person - biking to class, feeling the cold Minneapolis wind on my cheeks and coming to class fresh and crisp.  Even in my sharp morning mood, I was almost a mute in this class at first while the slugs could talk and analyze and discuss and quip.  At that time in my life, I had issues with speaking in classes.  I was worried that every word I spoke would be dissected by others, made fun of, that my voice wasn't important or that my thoughts were ridiculous.  It was this class that helped me (forced me) out of my quiet prison.  Every day, I would go into our dark little classroom which was held in a side conference room of one of the beautiful old halls at the UofM with a goal of speaking at least 2 times during class.  On the days I had to lead discussion, I would craft careful notes and speaking points, knowing that I had to speak way more than my goal of 2 times.  Somehow through my class centered on identity and memory, I cautiously began to emerge as a new version of myself.  Someone who spoke in classes and didn't care if my thoughts were perceived as silly or wrong.  My thoughts were part of me, and I mattered.  I realized during this class that I had been told to be quiet so often in my life - from my parents, to my teachers, to adults that finally I started to listen, and this class somehow helped me break out of that. I decided that the voice in the back of my head telling me to talk and move forward regardless of how I was raised or socialized was the voice I needed to listen to and in some ways it is that voice - the one that tells you to find a new truth is the same that Michael Hainey had to turn way up to complete his quest and write his memoir, After Visiting Friends (A Son's Story). 

After Visiting Friends centers around Michael's search to find the truth about his father's death.  He follows his instinct that he never knew the whole story, that something didn't seem right, and he does not relent until he tracks down every lead, every angle, every possibility that could help him recreate not only the story of his father's death, but also the story of who his father really was.  His mother didn't talk about his father's death or his father after he died.  Michael recalls, "After he died, silence descends.  Silence and fear.  My twin poles: My binary black holes.  I live in fear of upsetting my mother, of even uttering my father's name.  I believe that even by saying his name, I might kill her.  Or she might kill me."  Turning to his mother yielded heartbreaking silence, so he searched on his own for the truth and uncovers the code of newspapermen, marriage, and friendship.  He finds a way to himself and finds the courage to tell the story that might hurt those involved.

I picked up this book because Amazon.com named it as one of the top books of 2013 (so far) and one of the best memoirs of the year (so far).  I agree.  At first I had to get used to Michael's storytelling - bits and pieces of the past blended with his present day searching for his father.  He reconstructs how things could have been based on his searching, interviews, tracking down bits and pieces from the morgue reports to the obituaries in various papers, to relatives and past coworkers of his father, and he constructs his own truths based on the evidence he uncovers.  I was engrossed in his search for his father, and his search for himself.  Everyone tells him along his journey how much he looks and acts like his father and at times (like when he goes to his father's high school reunion) people who knew and loved his father seem comforted by his presence because he is so much like his father.

I cried a little at the end of this book because Hainey has a beautiful style that slowly unfolds his journey home - his discoveries and how he chooses to internalize and externalize them.

We all search for our self - whether it is finding a new voice in an Honors Seminar class, connecting with our past,  re-inventing our futures . . . we have a deep need to find truths and a deep need to turn away from the truth of how we have been shaped into the people we are.  Some of us are brave enough to tell the stories that have shaped us, like Michael, even if it did take the cajoling of Jan, the prophet and morgue worker, to help him realize how important his story is to tell.  After his visit to the morgue, Jan calls him almost an entire year after and says, "We are waiting for you to tell this story. . . There is a new person in you, trying to be born.  He's just barely peeping out of the box.  Are you going to slam the lid down on his fingers, or are you going to throw the lid off that dark box and come out fighting?" Hainey finds the courage to throw the lid off the box and tell his story much to the benefit of anyone who reads After Visiting Friends.

Language Lessons

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Had I known that sunflowers mean false riches, I would have put Gerber daisies (which mean cheerfulness) in the guest room when my brother-in-law brought his family to visit at the beginning of July.  I would not have put fresh cut hydrangeas in pretty glass vases all over the bathrooms and downstairs (hydrangeas mean dispassion).  I should have opted to cut my purple coneflowers which mean strength and health, or my pink roses which mean grace.  Had I known that the baggie full of basil I so lovingly gave my best friend Cari last summer secretly meant hate, I would have opted to fill the baggie with Oregano instead (which means joy).

I didn't know. 

But now I pay attention to the hidden meanings of flowers after reading Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers.  Although this book would most definitely be categorized as "Chick Lit" I loved it (since I am, in fact, a chick who likes lit).  Diffenbaugh presents an edge to her storyline that made me want to retain the secret Victorian language of flowers.  I knew that flowers had meanings.  I once attended a wedding where the bride ordered special flowers for her bridesmaids.  Each bouquet showcased flowers that emphasized the individual qualities she loved about each of the women she wanted by her side on her special day. I love the symbolic meaning of anything and to know that an entire language can exist not only for wooing a potential mate (which is how flowers were utilized in Victorian England), but to communicate so much more.  

While reading The Language of Flowers, it becomes almost impossible not to feel sympathy for the plight of the lonely Victoria who is a self proclaimed misanthrope due to her years spent in and out of foster care, her belongings in one box or bag, sharing space with other desperate girls who are aging out of the broken system.  At age 10 she comes close to happiness with Elizabeth, a vineyard owner and patient person who sees Victoria's anger and hostility as a match for her own loneliness and a window into her past self.  They come close to being a family, but the human heart holds darkness and limitations.  As Renata, the perceptive owner of the floral shop Bloom,  says to Victoria, "Do you really think you're the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed?  Who's been hurt almost to the point of breaking?" Because Victoria wants to punish herself for past mistakes, she refuses to depart from her loveless life. 

Something about Victoria and her aversion to love, her self imposed seclusion, her inability to stay when she finds love or kindness, and her self hatred resonated with me and not because I feel any of those things in my own life or with my own personality. I felt for her.  I wanted her to find happiness.  I wanted Grant to break through her icy exterior and teach her the language of human emotion - not just the language of flowers which she can recite and help others with in their own lives.  I wanted all of them to find the reconciliation that Hazel offers.  

The Language of Flowers was a beautiful two day diversion that made me aware of the symbolism all around me.  As I look out my window right now and see my beautiful Crepe Myrtle in bloom I know it means love, and when my friend Dayna came over for lunch and brought a mason jar full of zinnias (her daughter is named Zinnia) and a purple coneflower, I know that bouquet meant strength and health and I mourn your absence.  Maybe this wasn't what Dayna wanted to say, but I love the language of flowers and have an appreciation for it even more after reading Diffenbaugh's book.