Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde

This book was an interesting read almost from the first page.  I thought the story of a man, August, taking the trip he had planned with his son who died in an auto accident was poignant to say the least.  As if life hadn’t thrown him enough, his RV breaks down.  As he worries about how the cost of the repairs might impact the rest of his trip, he runs into an interesting situation.  The mechanic will not charge him for the repairs if he takes his two young sons along on the trip with him!

As I questioned the mechanics motives for wanting his sons to go with a stranger, I also questioned a man who would take two strange boys with him.  Maybe if I had read a bit more about the author or even read a review of the book prior to beginning my skepticism might not been so questioning!  Once I learned that the father was going to jail and didn’t want his kids going to a home while he was “away” it made more sense.  It did not take me long to see what was in it for August.

I liked August from the beginning. Maybe it was the fact that he was a teacher who loved to travel during the summer.  Having spent many years enjoying just that very thing, I could relate.  Taking the boys along would give him company and enable him to experience the trip through the eyes of young boys as his original purpose for the trip had been to share with his own son.  The boys would get to see things they would not otherwise and would not be in home for the summer.  I liked the way he clued in on things that were important to Seth and how he got Henry to talk.  The dog was an integral part of the relationship between August and the boys.  When he realized Seth wanted to document every stop and interesting thing, he bought each a disposable camera and then let Seth use his own digital camera.  When he realized henry had blisters on his feet from hiking, he bought them proper socks.

As the story develops we learn that August attends AA meeting regularly. Seth asks to go and we learn that his dad, Wes, is not in jail for one offense but repeated offenses for DUIs.  It surprised me that August went to AA but I understand his reasons.  Wes did not surprise me.

Through his act of generosity, August gave the boys their lives.  Seth developed into a great climber, Henry found his voice, albeit a bit late than one imagined!  I more than half expected the boys to go to live with August in San Diego but they did not.

Every story has multiple parts and this book is no different. August saved the boys and they would return to save him.  He becomes ill, has to sell the RV and Seth says he wants to buy it.  He and Henry come to pick it up and drag August along for “on last trip” or so August thinks.  Their final destination for the trip is no surprise to anyone but August.  Nor is the end of the book.  He allowed the young men to grow into who they are despite an alcoholic father. They appreciated his efforts and would reciprocate as long as it was necessary before taking one last trip—to spread August’s ashes along the way.  Definitely a feel good book!

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This is an interesting book based on the simple, yet very complex lives of two children during WWII.  At first you assume they are leading separate lives with no possible connection.  However as the novel progresses one begins to see how intertwined their lives are.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc lives in France.  Paris to begin with and then as the Nazis approach she relocates to Saint Malo, which upon investigation is found in Brittany.  She begins the story with sight but rapidly loses it due to illness.  Her fascination with everything is enchanting.  She is particularly interested in snails, shells, pine cones, etc.  I imagine it is due to the distinctive nature of each object.  Like many who lose one ability or another, she is afraid to try new things until her father builds her a replica of her community.  For each birthday he would build her something miniature with a surprise inside.  This becomes very important as the story develops.  As she learns to maneuver the streets like she does her birthday presents her confidence increases.  This preparation will not only enable her to survive when she is transplanted to Saint Malo but will help her to avoid the perils of war as many could not.

In Germany is Werner Pfenning, a young boy of a similar age living in an orphanage with his sister Jutta.  He is as fascinated with mechanical things as Marie-Laure is with snails and shells.  He is especially gifted when it comes to radios.  This love of getting radios to work and listening to broadcasts with is sister is the connection between Werner and Marie-Laure. Werner and Jutta are listening to broadcasts from Marie-Laure’s grandfather.  The broadcasts include a science lesson and classical music.  It is all in French which Werner also speaks and so does the Frau who runs the orphanage.

Their two lives will coincide again when Werner, a German soldier, encounters Marie-Laure and realizes the connection between the broadcasts he listened to as a child and the young girl he meets while looking to find illegal radios.  His decisions have a lasting impact on both their lives as they exchange something of value to survive.  The true nature of this is seen in the final chapters of the book.

The story has plenty of everything—drama, war, espionage, disaster and horrific events.  It is a story that could be true of just about any two children growing into adulthood during WWII.  While Doerr does not dwell on the horrors of war it is easy to experience them without having to go into each terrible detail.  Sometimes less is more and he uses this perfectly. 

This book is a story within a story within a story.  In the end it simply a story!

Little Bitty Lies by Mary Kay Andrews

I am not certain why this book intrigued me from the very beginning. Several of our more recent selections have taken a while to get into but not this one.  Maybe it was because it is a little bit Desperate Housewives or Hart of Dixie and even a touch of Peyton Place.  Maybe it is because while it is a novel, I can see women having to determine what to do when the life they know disappears in a second.  For whatever the reason, I enjoyed this book.

Mary Bliss is the proper Southern woman.  She does her job, even makes homemade food to take to her nursing home bound mother-in-law whom she realizes can’t stand her. She does everything correctly because that is how she was raised.  Then the bottom drops out of her life. Her husband abandons her, taking everything except their daughter.  Faced with losing the house, unable to pay her daughter’s tuition and wondering where her next meal would come from, she does what any woman would do.  She got a job.

Mary Bliss working in the store handing out samples proved just how far she had fallen.  No society woman in Atlanta would take such a job.  I laughed that she showed up in heels and thought she would make $22.00 per hour handing out samples.  This only adds to her naiveté and makes her more endearing.  Still she is a principled person and does not let the job get her down.  She will be the best at whatever she determines.  One line in the book sums it all up —Nobody lets that girl do anything! She will do what she puts her mind to.

Katherine is another story. She too sets out to get her way any way she can. When her husband leaves her for another woman she sets out for revenge. In the meantime she remains a true friend to Mary Bliss. She helps her figure out finances, plan a death and stands by her the entire time. She connives to regain her own husband—successfully, I must say. 

Erin is the abandoned daughter. Her story is far too common these days.  Taken advantage of by a coach, abandoned by her father and then by the coach, blaming her mother for all that is wrong in her life.  While her behavior is not ideal, it is understandable.

Synopsis of other characters:  Or just an assessment of them!

Matt-good guy who saw something he wanted and found a way to make it happen.  Good man, promising that the future will be brighter for both Mary Bliss and Erin even though they may not realize it now.

Charlie-even though he did leave Katherine for a younger woman, he did come back. He was willing to overlook the faked death and help Mary Bliss get everything in order by book’s end.

Parker—horse’s ass. Couldn’t take his own life so decided to ruin everyone else’s.  Was he in a relationship with Russell?  My guess is yes given the fact that he was living in the Keys and everything was in his name—just my two cents worth.

Randy—good guy who lets others take advantage.  He has twice gone back to his less than faithful wife.  Did she really make that much more money than him that is was better to stay with her cheating self than to go out on his own and raise his kids in a good, stable home? He was a good neighbor, was trying to raise his sons correctly and deserves better than Nancye who slept with everyone.

Eula/Meemaw—reminds me of my Granny without the two million. Ornery as the day is long, strong as an ox and stubborn.  Still when it came down to it she realized that Mary Bliss was the rock in the family and her son was not the sunshine in the sky every morning.

Mary Bliss is a strong woman or as is the southern was a GRITS girl.  She stood up for herself, did what she wanted even in the face of public ridicule in the community and put her family first.  Most people would have let Eula wither away at the nursing home due to her own spitefulness. Mary Bliss did not. She took her responsibilities seriously and helped those she could.  She held on to her confidence, her sense of right and wrong and tried not to judge others unduly.

Shocking moments include the renewal of relationships in “Split City” everyone who was spilt got back together and her marriage, which she considered the only stable one around, was the one that ended.  Poetic justice or just the way life works out?

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Set in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia, this book is a combination of murder mystery and Appalachian drama.  Samantha Kofer loses her high profile job in NYC where she is an attorney for a financial group.  She technically is only furloughed but even that early on you know the hills will draw her in and her return to NYC is likely to be just for visits from that time forward.  To his credit, Grisham leaves the frequency up to the reader to decide if Samantha will become a permanent resident of Brady or just a temporary transplant from the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple.

With a lawyer mother in Main Justice, a powerhouse attorney father even though he has been disbarred, this Georgetown Law graduate really had nowhere to go but up. Then the recession hit and the bottom fell out of the money contracts.  Given the option of quitting, trying to find another job or taking the furlough and keeping her health insurance she chose the latter!  Smart woman as health insurance is golden. The only option that responded was the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic and she decided to take it.

Brady, a fictional town in a nonexistent county, is the type of place where a little can go a long way. People are poor.  They are more than not undereducated and wary of outsiders.  Unlike the first book we read about Appalachia, these are hard-working folks who have the odds against them probably from day one.  I wondered when I first started the book, if meth use was going to be its central focus but it was a side show compared to the real criminal element in the area—strip mining and coal companies more interested in the bottom dollar than the people who work the mines.
I grew up when strip mining was first a hot topic.  Laws were enacted mandating the reclamation of the land.  Grisham points out in the book that much of the land reclaimed was made into things like golf courses in a land where the majority of the residents don’t have the time or money to play golf.  I know several people who died in the mines. Classmates fathers, uncles and brothers.  When Mr. Ryzer talked about how the miners had lost their union twenty years ago, I thought of the mine disaster that from a couple of years ago.  I lost a college acquaintance who went into the mines because it paid better than teaching.  That mine was a nonunion mine and safety was not a top priority.

People died—good and bad people. Lives were threatened and destroyed.  All good items for a book but not good for the millions of people who live like he depicted every day.  I liked the way Samantha grew into the job.  She began taking risks. Yes she was a city girl with lots of street smarts but in a city where you may never see the same person twice those smarts will require adjusting when you enter a small town where your business is everyone’s business!  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and the big city lawyers with their slick, threatening approach to bullying the poor into going without benefits, livelihoods and decency truly pissed her off. I know he probably won’t write a follow-up to this but I have written my own next chapter!  I look forward to discussing it with you at our next meeting!

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

This book took a bit to get into.  In fact it took over a hundred pages before I was hooked.  Since this is only the second novel of Mr. King’s I have read I guess I was hoping for the book to draw me in like so many of the movies and miniseries have.  I think this will make a great movie too!

This is a multifaceted story of people who have social, psychological and personal issues.  Each of the characters here has some form of these issues.

Brady Hartsfield is one very disturbed young man but I should have expected nothing less.  Once the source of his psychosis begins to become clear then the story gets more interested.  He holds two jobs, cares for a dependent mother and kills people.  He is both a victim and a victimizer.  Very intelligent, he cannot cope with normality on a day to day basis. His mother, Debbie is not quite as dysfunctional as she seemed. True she was a drunk, but highly functioning as proven in the end.

The Trelawney family is equally dysfunctional.  Olivia and Holly (Gibney) both suffer from OCD and who knows what else.  Olivia’s care was used in the first murder and then she was driven over the proverbial edge by the driver through some very unusual methods.  Holly manages to control her own illness to capture the same killer!  Janey had come around to believing she might find some happiness when Brady kills her trying to kill Hodges.

Bill Hodges is trying to deal with retirement and thinks about killing himself.  Brady exploits that thinking it would be a fun thing to do—make the guy bite the bullet in reality. 

Jerome is the least confused in the entire group. His social issue is more based on the fact that he is a brilliant young black man who falls into Ebonics from time to time and likes to hang out with the retired old guy whom he alternately learns from and teaches.

The technical details of the story fascinate me.  I hope they are not able to hook into our computers and control our lives. It does make you think twice about allowing a third party to work on the computer though! 

Do I like the way the story ends?  Yes and no.  For those who survive life improves. However for the survivors, there are the memories of those who did not.  As for Brady Hartsfield?  I think he lives to wreak havoc again!

Just One More Damned Thing by Jodi Taylor

What if?  The question is often asked and answers are rarely given.  Movies are made about time travel; TV series popularize the idea and books, as we know delve into the topic.  Jodi Taylor has combined many things in her book to enable the audience to not only believe in time travel but look forward to the journey with the characters.

This book offers science fiction, history, intrigue and espionage all wrapped up nicely with a human interest side tossed into the mix to make it believable.  While she delves into some more than others, each character is quite human. Maxwell is a loner. She has had a rough childhood but found solace in books and history.  She is fiercely independent, does not tolerate alcohol well, is slow to trust others and extremely stubborn. Each of these traits has her both competent and inept at the same time.  I was very happy when she began her relationship with Leon Farrell.  His is the only other character’s story that gets much detail.  Other seems more surface that deep. I assume each character is essentially a loner who is very intelligent and willing to give up interaction with the outside world to achieve and experience time travel.

St. Mary’s is like I imagine many secret institutions.   It is filled with intelligent people who think what they have to offer is better than anything anyone else has to offer.  The experiments are secret. Interaction with the outside world is discouraged but participants are expected to build teams.  Funding is both plentiful and tight.  The work done there is important and most likely never to be told to the world!

What I liked:  the concept to time travel. I often wonder what it would be like to see the world in a different time. I do not think I would be the least bit interested in going by 68 million years though!  I liked the technical aspects of the pods.  Not only could they blend in but the modules could tape what was happening for later investigation. I liked Maxwell’s sense of loyalty and determination to always complete the job. I liked that even though members of the group disliked one another they still worked to get the job done.

What I didn’t like: the pregnancy. Was that supposed to depict the depth of despair, that she could fall no lower? I disliked that so many were lost on the trips but recognize that if one drops into an historical event, one must expect that it might get dicey!  I dislike, but totally believe it possible, that some are willing to break the law to make a fortune, even to the point of going into history and changing it.

I really wish the book ended its story. I understand the idea of a series but would prefer something more definitive.  Now I have to read the others!

China Dolls by Lisa See

This book is historical fiction.  I enjoy reading the genre and enjoyed the book.  I went on-line afterward to read what others had to say regarding it and found a mixed bag of comments. Folks either liked it or found it wanting.  For those who did not like it they wondered how these three women became and remained friends despite such varied backgrounds.  Having given some thought to that I find it much easier to see how they did versus how they would not. 

It was 1938 and these three women were doing what most young ladies would never do—let alone young ladies of breeding.  However, each was a damaged person in her own way.  Grace Lee was fleeing an abusive father. Ruby Tom was hiding her Japanese heritage and Helen Fong was dealing with many issues, least of all being a daughter who had perceivably brought shame to the family. The author does a good job of letting the reader know what the backstory is to each girl as the story develops. Helen’s story is the last to be fully detailed.  It goes to the heart of many traditional Asian families of the time who held daughters accountable for things beyond their control.

Relationships are interesting.  Grace and Ruby wanted the same man.  Ruby was not picky about her relationships and Grace was.  Helen appears a bit jealous of both at times, possibly because she is judged so harshly.  While she seemed to like both girls, I do believe Grace was her best friend as they had more in common than did Helen and Ruby.  When Helen turned Ruby into the authorities for being Japanese she was dealing with her past.  It is not until near the end of the book that we learn why she did this.  Maybe this is why some thought these girls would never have been friends.

Those who did enjoy the book liked the details of the circuit of dance girls and the entertainment of the late 30s and even to the post war era.  I do not recall ever hearing about the travelling shows discussed in the book but then I doubt they ever made it to WV!  Reading the Acknowledgements at the book’s end lets me know that such tours existed and so did many of the people in the book.  Fascinating characters formed from collections of history makes this book come alive for me.

Grace Lee is a talented young lady running for her life.  She makes her way in a hard world and with the help of Ruby and Helen survives in a world that could have eaten her alive.  She meets Joe early, falls in love, appears to lose him to Ruby and eventually marries him and lives a great life.  She was always focused on making a life for herself.  She however, never forgot her mother, sending money back to her through her own dance teacher. This was done to protect her mother from her father’s wrath. It is amazing that her father for all his abusive actions toward her remained proud of Grace to his dying day. If only he would have shown that instead of beating her.  But, then she would not have left, made her way to San Francisco and become famous.

Helen Fong was a dutiful daughter. Her parents had sent her back to China where she married a Chinese man. Then why was her own father so derogatory?  Was it only because she was a girl?  Helen meets Grace and sees in her someone she fears she will never be—strong and independent.  Helen takes a stand about dancing telling her father she will be adding more to the family coffers than her brothers.  Money talks and she goes into business.  When she meets and falls in love with an Occidental she is continuing to shame her family.  Becoming pregnant does not help. So, marrying a gay man makes it all better.  She has Tommy, her father is happy she is married and ironically, Eddie is more accepted by her father than she is.  Sad that her father never seemed to recognize her value any more than Grace’s did.  Still she goes on to become very successful herself. Only when we learn her true story to we realize just how strong a person Helen really is.

Ruby Tom so wanted to be someone other than who she was.  Being Japanese was not easy before the war and certainly not easier after the war.  She did what she had to do to survive and didn’t really care who she used or hurt in the process. At least that is the way she is portrayed.  I think she has a different backstory that wasn’t brought completely out by the author.  Learning to entertain all those Navy guys at a very young age indicates there is much more than just being a dancer to her life.  She is the one who essentially dances nude in the shows, has numerous affairs and even five husbands. 

I think even the naming of these girls reflects their character.  Grace was graceful. She was caring and forgiving. Ruby was flashy even to the end.  Helen was stable and strong.  So, I tend to agree that Lisa See developed a great historical novel about interesting women who lived in a time fraught with hardship and progress.  They survived.  Many did not.