The Orphan Sister by Gwendolen Gross

The Orphan Sister is not what I expected. The back of the books says,

Clementine Lord is not an orphan. She just feels like one sometimes. One of triplets, a quirk of nature left her the odd one out. Odette and Olivia are identical; Clementine is a singleton. Biologically speaking, she came from her own egg. Practically speaking, she never quite left it.

Then Clementine’s father – a pediatric neurologist who is an expert on children’s brains, but clueless when it comes to his own daughters – disappears and his choices both past and present, force the family dynamics to change at last. As the three sisters struggle to make sense of it, their mother must emerge from the greenhouse and leave the flowers that have long been the focus of her warmth and nurturing.

For Clementine, the next step means retracing the winding route that led her to this very moment: to understand her father’s betrayal, the tragedy of her first lost love, her family’s divisions, and her best friend Eli’s sudden romantic interest. Most of all, she may finally have found the voice with which to shape the inside story of being the odd sister out.

So after reading the back, I imagined the story starting out with the birth of the triplets and then going into their childhood, showing Clementine’s struggle as the odd sister out. I figured the story would climax with the disappearance of their father, probably somewhere around their teenage years when Clementine discovers what she needs to about herself. I was very wrong.

The story starts out with Clementine in her late twenties and her dad had just disappeared. It continues from this point with Clementine constantly flashing back to her past. Her father returns (before reading the book, I didn’t think that he was going to return, another instance where I was wrong) and must face the family with why he left without telling them where he was going. Only at the very end does the family figure out how to live without Dr. Lord and only some have come to terms with why he disappeared.

I’m not sure that I would recommend this book. There is some bad language, although I can understand why it is used, and Clementine is often bringing up sex, in her past and in the present. The story of triplets where 2 are identical and one is not is an interesting concept. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more without my preconceived ideas. If you’re interested give it a try.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

I have enjoyed many of Robin McKinley’s children’s novels, so I got on amazon.com to find more of her books to read.

Deerskin is NOT a children’s novel. The story starts off just like any good fairytale talking about how the king married the most beautiful woman in 7 kingdoms and how they were so happy together until the queen dies and the king is filled with an uncontrollable grief. Before her death, the queen makes her love promise to only marry again if he can find a woman that is more beautiful than she ever was and the queen also has a portrait made to remind the king of her beauty.

Honestly, the first part of the novel made me think that this was going to be like a Snow White type of story. In a way, it is, but it’s not a wicked stepmother that drives the daughter away. The king brutally rapes his own daughter (I guess because she grew up to be as beautiful as her mother), and the rest of the book is how the princess (Deerskin as she later calls herself) recovers from such a brutal and utterly wrong experience.

I was somewhat disturbed with what happened in this story. I still like Robin McKinley as an author, but I think I’ll be a little more careful with her future books.

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I was playing around on amazon.com when this book was recommended because of other purchases that I had made.

I enjoyed reading The False Prince. I did find it a little predictable, but that is probably because a 30 year old adult is not the intended audience. This book is probably for a 5^th grader or higher.

It is the story of an orphan boy who is chosen, against his will, to be trained to impersonate a prince. The actual prince was lost at sea and presumed dead, but when the entire royal family is murdered, one man tries to gain control of the throne by bringing back the “lost” prince.

I really liked this book. It was a refreshing read. It is also the first book in a series and I look forward to reading the others.

Howards End by E. M. Forester

This is one I picked up at the library.  The back of the book says:


What makes this masterpiece a pure delight for contemporary readers is its vibrant portrait of life in Edwardian England, and the wonderful characters who inhabit the charming old country house in Hertfordshire called Howards End. This cozy house becomes the object of an inheritance dispute between the upright conservative Wilcox family and the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, sensitive and intuitive women loved by men willing to leap wide social barriers to fulfill their ardor.  Through romantic entanglements, disappearing wills, and sudden tragedy, the conflict over the house emerges as a symbolic struggle for England's future.  Rich with the tradition, spirit, and wit distinctively English, Howards End is a remarkable novel of rare insight and understanding. As in his celebrated A Passage to India, E. M. Forster brings to vivid life a country and an era through the destinies of his unforgettable characters.


Sounds interesting.  After reading the back of the book I expected there to be a lot of drama surrounding Howards End throughout the whole book.  The truth: there isn't much of an inheritance dispute, there aren't very many social barriers for the Schlegel sisters and they weren't really loved by very many men, the "will" that "disappeared" had no legal bearing so it wasn't really a will at all and because of that truth there isn't really any conflict over the house to create any symbolism anyway.

The back of the book makes Howards End seem a lot more dramatic that it really was.  In fact, most of the drama is created by Margaret and Helen anyway and even then it is mostly in their heads - as drama in the lives of rich, female, bored characters from Edwardian England usually is.  Don't get me wrong, there is some drama, even some juicy drama, but overall it is a pretty tame story.

One thing that really bothered me was the wordiness.  There were a few places were E. M. Forster seemed to use the same sentence three or so times in a row but just rewrote them - like he needed is book to be a certain number of words for a homework assignment.

It also felt like the author was trying too hard to create a female character that wasn't typical.  He seemed to try to make Margaret a progressive thinker but really, to me, she came off as being confusing.  She'd go on and on about her ideals but they really didn't make any sense making her feel less like a progressive thinker and more like a dumb woman who was trying to pretend to be a progressive thinker.

I know I haven't said a lot of good things about Howards End so far but I did think it was worth a read.  After getting past the wordiness and Margaret being confusing, the story line was solid and interesting with a few unexpected twists and few more expected twists.  If you like reading stories from this era of England then you'd probably enjoy it.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I read The Lovely Bones. It took me well over a month to finish it - not because it was long but because every time I picked it up, I never felt like I had to keep reading.

That sounds like a negative but in this case it really wasn't a bad thing. It was nice to be able to read a book for just a few hours once a week and never feel like when I picked it up again I might be lost or I might have forgotten what had happened since the last time I read.

The back of the book reads:

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

With the above description I figured it would be some kind of murder mystery type book but we find out who killed Susie on the second page. That's when I thought that maybe it isn't a mystery to the reader but it will be a murder mystery to the characters in the book who are still living. It wasn't that either. The whole book is written from Susie's point of view - which was a little different (in a good way) considering she was dead the whole time - and was basically just Susie watching the lives of her family and friends from heaven.

You'd think that a big climax of the book would be the fate of her murdering, but it was really anti-climatic, just a little blurb toward the end - it was written in a way that made it hardly seem important. Any maybe, given everything else that happens, it wasn't important - I still thought it was strange that so little emphasis was put on it when a good chunk of the beginning and middle of the book focuses on the murderer.

The back of the book also indicates that the story might contain some humor, but to be honest, I don't recall thinking anything in the story was funny at all. It is actually a quite disturbing story at times and it was on the sixth or seventh page when I went "Oh, that's why the movie was rated R."

Overall I'd say The Lovely Bones was good. Not great, but good.

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale

            What Jane Austen fan wouldn’t want to spend a few days or longer vacationing in that era of romance and intrigue?

            If you enjoyed Shannon Hale’s first book, Austenland, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. Some of the Austenland characters are the same: Mrs. Wattlesbrook, Captain Andrews, Miss Charming, and Sir John. There are also many new characters to add twists and turns to the plot, including the new heroine, Mrs. Cordial.

            This time Pembrook Park is stuck in the midst of a murder mystery: 21 nuns mysteriously drop dead with no marks on their bodies and a dead body is found in a secret room. Are these murders real, or are they a part of the Austenland experience. Charlotte Cordial must find the truth.

            Shannon Hale does a really good job on this Austenland sequel. The story doesn’t really have the feel of a sequel and the reader need not read the first Austenland to enjoy the second.

between shades of gray by Ruta Sepetys

This book is about the Lithuanian deportation to Siberia by the Soviets during WWII. Although this book is a book of fiction, it is based on the stories of many survivors of these deportations.

            I remember learning about WWII in high school, but it was from the American point of view. We learned that Hitler and the Japanese were the bad guys in the war. I don’t remember learning much about the Soviets. They fought against Hitler, so they must have been good, right. Actually they were not. I’ve learned from reading this book and others about WWII and other wars, that there are really no set good guys and bad guys. There are good and bad people on both sides of any war.

            This book was a real eye opener. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler in many ways. He conquered the Baltic countries: Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Within these countries he deported many of the educated people because they could teach others and spread ideas that would be considered anti-Soviet. These individuals went through many of the same hardships and torture as the Jews did under Hitler’s regime.

            between shades of gray is a well written book that shows the cruelty of war, the will to survive, and the generosity of those that tried to help the deportees.

            If you can not handle the graphic telling of what happens during war, then this book is not for you. If you are interested in learning a little more about what some people went through during the horrors of WWII, then give this book a try. It is an easy read, there were places where it was very difficult to put the book down.

Additional Review:  After reading Jennifer's review I decided that I really wanted to read this book.

If I didn't know any better, I would have thought this book was about how Nazi's treated Jews because the parallels were right on.  I always new Stalin was a bad guy (even though Russia and the US were technically allies in WW2) and I knew that he treated people like crap and had even heard that he was responsible for more deaths than Hitler but I didn't realize that the treatment of the people who died (and survived) was so similar.

I'm a big fan of WW2 survival stories.  There can be a lot of gruesome stuff in these books but there is usually one underlying message in all of them: people in need help other people in need.  After some background information is one of my favorite excerpts from between shades of gray: 

A little background, these people were living in the arctic circle during the winter (the sun didn't rise for months) with absolutely nothing.  The narrator and a friend found a dead owl and determined to take it back to their living space (their "jurta" made out of sticks and mud) to cook it (on a stolen stove) and eat it.  The owl was too big for the narrator to hide under her coat (had to be hidden because it would have been taken away had the Soviet army seen her with it).


"People I didn't know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn't ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.  I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer."


I think it is really telling that a group of starving people would help one person hide food.  They could have demanded that she share it with them.  They could have turned her in out of spite or jealousy.  They didn't.  They helped her for the sake of helping, for the sake of having a cause - something to live for.

between shades of gray was an excellent book and an easy read; I think I finished the first 50 chapters in one sitting.  I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who can handle the more disturbing aspects of war.

Andrea

Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.

The full title of this book is Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. To begin with, this book has nothing to do with the Ophelia from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, so don't start reading thinking that it is.

Dr. Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist who has worked with girls for decades. In this book, she seeks to answer the following question as stated on the back of the book: "Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before?"


So does she give an answer? Yes and no. Frankly, by the time I was done reading this book, I was not left with much hope. But at the same time I was glad I had read it.

The bulk of the book consists of Dr. Pipher relating stories from some of her patients and other girls she has interviewed. And some of these stories are horrifying. These girls' experiences include dieting, suicide, sexual harassment, rape, and dealing with a variety of family issues, such as divorce, adoption, and abandonment. These stories are written as told by the girls and are brutally honest at times. Be prepared to have your heart broken for them--repeatedly. There are a couple girls' stories in which the girls are confident, high-functioning young women who know who they are and who are not dealing with severe issues, but this is only a couple stories--like 2 out of 25.

The rest of the book consists of Dr. Pipher discussing the various aspects of our society that can negatively affect the girls and young women of today. And this is where the yes and no of answering her original question comes in.

Yes, she answers her original question in that she offers some advice on how to prepare our girls. The main thing I took from the book is that we need to discuss how our society portrays women with our girls. When we see women in advertisements, commercials, movies, and books, we need to talk to our girls about whether or not these portrayals are realistic and good. We need to open up discussions to help our girls actively decide what kind of women they want to become.

No, she does not answer her original question in that she can not offer any hard and fast solution. Each girl grows up in a unique situation and her challenges can not be predicted or always prevented.

Don't I wish we could prevent these bad things from happening to our girls!

As a woman who hopes to one day be the mother of girls, I am glad I read this book. However depressing the book was at times, I think it gave me some good insights into how I can be a better mother to daughters.