Ginny Moon

Ginny Moon is the story told through the eyes of a young autistic girl.  She was taken away from an abusive home when she was nine and after a few foster living situations that did not work out she has found her, "Forever Parents". 

This is a great plot, we watch Ginny, learning to adapt to life in a home with loving parents, and go to school, fitting in with other special needs children and even participate in Special Olympics.  the amazing part of this book is that author, Benjamin Ludwig, has I think, really gotten the voice correctly on this character.  The reader really feels like they are listening to Ginny think and speak.  There is a rhythm to Ginny's speech.  There are the unique behavior patterns.  But, not only does Ludwig understand the autistic brain, he has gotten the young girl's thoughts too.  She is completely believable.

Learning to live together as a family is not easy for Ginny or her Forever Mom and Dad.  There are numerous hurtles to overcome and then there are roadblocks thrown in the way. 

Of course to add some tension to the plot, there is a secret that Ginny has not been able to convey to the people around her about the Baby Doll she left behind when she was taken away from her birth mom.  It is an obsession that Ginny cannot let go of, and she is trying to escape to retrieve her Baby Doll at every opportunity.  This adds some suspense and drama to the storyline.

This is not just an enjoyable storyline, it explores the what it is like to live inside the mind of an autistic child.  This book shows how important love, caring and respect are in changing the life of a foster child, especially one with special needs.  It also shows how much effort parent child relationships take.  How building trust and love can change lives.

Ginny Moon is a book you will not want to put down until you reach the end.

You'll Never Know, Dear

OK I just finished Hallie Ephron's newest book, You'll Never Know, Dear.

I was a little nervous that it would give me nightmares, which is funny because the granddaughter in this story, Vanessa, is working on research grant about sleep and nightmares. Her mother and Grandmother are in an accident back home and Vanessa drops everything to go home to help them confront the past and the disappearance of her mother, Elizabeth's younger sister, Janey, so many years ago. Suspense builds as the women try to find Janey and also find out what happened the day she went missing. Good twists and turns keep the suspense building.

I do not want to give anything away so I will not write too much about this book, except that it is a good story for an afternoon when its raining or snowing outside.

Turkey Trot Murder

We are living in a very turbulent  political climate right now and it was interesting to read a light, entertaining mystery novel that seems to cover all the topics that are in the news on a daily basis.
It surprised me that author, Leslie Meier would jump in with both feet and cover both the opioid crisis and the very negative and disturbing immigrant prejudice that we are experiencing in the United States today.

But then that is what made this mystery novel so interesting for me to keep reading.  The mystery plot itself was very light and I found it seemed a bit far-fetched.  The first inconsistency is that it is a few weeks before Thanksgiving and the first frost is mentioned and yet the pond already has a layer of ice on it. 

But incredibly there is discussion of young people and the drug epidemic, when twenty something Alison is found having fallen through the ice.  Also there are so many comments "ripped" as they say from the headlines in this story including immigrants from Mexico and drugs. 

Lucy Stone, the local newspaper reporter and amateur detective, is covering a court case involving three young men accused of drug trafficking.  As she leaves the courthouse, she comments on the verdict and that they were not local kids and they were causing a lot of trouble for the town.
"When she stepped outside she realized there was another dimension to the case.  A group of demonstrators had gathered on the grassy area in front of the courthouse and were holding signs that read BUILD A WALL!! DEPORT THE DRUG DEALERS! and AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!"

These are all sentiments that have been shouted and tweeted by the top political figures of the US government.  Just as in this novel, these statements build up resentment and lead to trouble and people getting hurt.  There is also another point in the book where Meier quotes liberally from the news media,   "Great. That is what we want.  We want folks to realize that these immigrants, these Muslims and Mexicans and Somalis, are taking our country away from us.  It's white people like you and me that built this country and now folks like us can't get jobs.  All the jobs have gone overseas to places like Bangladesh and China.  ....It's crazy the way we're letting these Mexicans flood the country with drugs, and they are sending us their criminals too."  There is no question where these ideas are coming from, the Republican party in Washington DC.

So I think though Meier is not coming out and really taking a political position, she just includes these characters in this mystery novel, she has taken a risk writing this novel and must really want to speak out about what is happening in our country. 

Modern Girls

Modern Girls by Jennifer S. Brown was actually not what I expected.  I thought it would be a story about young working girls living in a more modern style than their mothers, working, going out to parties and drinking with friends after work at the local bar. 

Every generation wants to think of itself as more modern and experienced than the last.  Every parent dreams that their children will be better off than they were.  They work hard to give their children all the advantages that they could not afford or were not available to them.  Yet, each child has to be their own person.  Children are independent and take chances that lead them down the path they must take in life.   Parents can only advise and maybe be there to pick up the pieces when things don't turn out perfectly.  Every daughter thinks she is more knowledgeable than her mother, is sometimes embarrassed by her mother, and feels she is more stylish than her mother.

Modern Girls is set in 1935, New York City.  Dottie still lives at home with her parents and brothers on the Lower Eastside of NY.  She has grown beyond her neighborhood by getting a job at Dover Insurance and she has just been promoted from an office girl to the head bookkeeper because she has a talent for numbers.  She has a long time boyfriend, Abe Rabinowitz, her devout and Dottie hopes, devoted boyfriend who she is hoping to marry.  Until things go horribly wrong, and in an effort to make Abe jealous, Dottie spends a night with Willie Klein.

Dottie has prided herself on being modern, working, dressing in the most fashionable clothes.  But, when she becomes in a family way without the benefit of marriage, she must figure out how modern she really is.  

In a parallel plot line, her mother Rose, an immigrant who came to America and married twenty years ago, now the mother of five children, is just finding her light at the end of the parenting tunnel.  Feeling that she can go out and socialize with her women friends and work for social justice causes with her friends, she is not ready to start all over when she finds out that she is pregnant again.  

Rose is feeling old and tired to start over with a new baby, with feedings and dirty diapers.  She is frustrated that she will not be able to help organize a letter writing campaign to encourage the United States government to relax the quotas for Jews coming into the country from Europe as reports are filtering in about the horrors of Hitler in Germany.

Two women at different stages in their lives facing major changes in their lifestyles.  Each must make an important choice and decision that will change their lives forever.

Also explored through this novel is the difference between living on the Lower Eastside and Park Avenue.  Rose and Dottie live with the Jewish immigrant population, where Yiddish is still the primary language spoken.  Willie Klein who is the father of Dottie's baby, and his family have left the old world behind and are integrating into American society.  "In the city, I didn't see Willie too often.  His parents had distanced themselves from the lower East Side, taken to their Park Avenue address with full body and soul.  ... mostly he stayed in his own world except to partake every now and then in the Yiddishe  nightlife.  His parents thought the cramped and crowded Lower East Side - the shaddachan making marriages, the peddlers on the street - an embarrassment, a throwback to life in the Old Country, even though neither had experienced it."

How Rose and Dottie come to terms with and deal with their pregnancies is admirable and touching, which makes Modern Girls a charming and engaging read.

Glass Houses

Louise Penny has written another fabulous mystery novel about our friends in Three Pines.  Chief Superintendent of the Surete du Quebec, Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie.  His second in command and son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and head of homicide, Isabelle Lacoste.  Of course there are all the citizens of the small hidden village; Ruth Zardo, Olivier and Gabri, Clara and Myrna.  Then there are the guests and newcomers to the village, who help create the cast of characters that will be the victims and suspects in the murder case.

Each murder mystery that Penny writes is fantastic as a mystery novel in its self.  But also it is a work of art in fiction literature.  It does not just rest on the laurels of being a good whodunit, it takes the reader on a literary journey with beautiful descriptions of the forest and life in a small village.   As the reader you go between two types of feelings.  First, you like you are right there with the friends sitting at the table in the bistro sharing a bottle of wine or drinking your own hot chocolate to warm up in front of the fire on a snowy day.  You are sharing a meal with Gamache and Beauvoir  discussing the clues of the case.

"Olivier stood at the window of the bistro and watched the Surete officers walking down the road from the church.  He wasn't alone.  The rest of the village, and those from outlying farms, had gathered in the bistro, the focal point for the community, in good times and bad.  ...They watched silently as Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste walked toward them through the cold November drizzle that turned, every now and then, into sleet.   Then back again.  Olivier and Gabri had been handing out coffee and tea, juices, and fresh, warm cookies from Sarah's bakery.  No alcohol.  No need to feed already heightened emotions.  ...Both fireplaces, on either side of the bistro, were lit. And now the only sound, besides some labored breathing, was the cheery crackle of the logs.  The place smelled of woodsmoke and rich coffee.  And wet wool form those who'd arrived late, hurrying through the damp afternoon."

The second feeling could be jealousy, the feeling that you want to have that kind of place to go, to feel the warmth of a small pub or cafe, where you can go and replicate the cosiness that is described by Penny in this place and with the friends that you can always count on like these people seem to be able to trust and rely on each other.

So in this book, the murder plot revolves around the idea that a strange figure appears in the center of town who looks like the Grim Reaper, and is called a "cobrador", acting as a conscience for someone who has done something bad and gotten away with it.  This figure follows the person around until the pay their debt, either money or with guilt and embarrassment.  Things go wrong and after watching the cobrador stand on the village green for two days, someone is found dead. 

The book starts in the middle with Gamache on the witness stand in court testifying about who the murderer is.  The interesting concept in this book is how it travels back and forth in time, between the trial in the present tense, with Gamache telling the story as he testifies, and a kind of flashback, where we are back in Three Pines as the case is being investigated.  In this back and forth style the entire case is revealed slowly, explaining how the murder occurred and how they discovered who committed the crime and what the motive was. 

Again just a wonderful literary mystery novel to sink down into the couch and imagine you are in  Myrna's book shop, in Three Pines, on a rainy, or snowy afternoon with some comfort food and hot chocolate reading about the case with Armand and Reine-Marie.

Born a Crime

Trevor Noah has written an incredible book.  I listened to him read the story of his childhood on the audiobook and it just made his story even more amazing.  He talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa explaining the incredible segregation between not only black and white, but also the prejudice against "colored" people, who are born of mixed heritage. 

I love watching Trevor Noah on late night television.  His show is clever and he is such a cute young man. I also love listening to him at night and on the audible book, his voice has such a soft lilting cadence and wonderful accent to it. 

What a life story he has lived in such a short time.  He has become so successful, but that is not what the book is about at all.  the book takes us back to his childhood, growing up with a black mother and a white father, who is not really involved in his upbringing.  He describes all the members of his family, from his mother, to his aunts and uncles and cousins in such a colorful manner.  They are all interesting characters.  His mother is very religious, believing that her faith will carry her through any disaster or trouble in her life.  He has two half brothers , when his mother marries another black man.  This man is abusive to his mother and he spends his youth defending and protecting her. 
He runs with a rough group of boys for a while as a teenager.  he gets into trouble along the way, but always seems to land on his feet.  Some of the time it seems like he is just lucky.  Other times it could be his easy going personality helps him win people over. 

He has lived through things our children here in America will never have to experience.  He has amazingly come out of it all to be very successful.  He has experienced hatred, and bigotry, physical abuse and even a stint in jail.  But the man you see on television seems like such a sweet likeable person, it is hard to imagine the life he describes in this book.

A Tightly Ravelled Mind

OK this is probably the craziest book I have ever read.   When I looked back at reviews after finishing the book I saw that many people put it down without finishing it.  I did think about a few times, but I kept thinking that there would be a good twist at the end, so on I plunged.

I will say that it is not the worst book, it did keep me reading to the end.  It did have some clever plot points and funny, in a awkward way, scenarios.  I will be recommending this book to a friend of mine who is a psychologist.

But I will say that it is not a good mystery in the sense of a whonunit.  It does not really build suspense and there is not really any good character development, so that you are really basically just shocked with the ending, but the author has not done a good job developing any of the characters so that you feel sorry for anyone or that justice has been dealt.

This is the story or Nora Goodman, who is a Freudian therapist, separated from her husband, also a therapist, taking care of her two young children.  She has half a dozen clients and they are starting to die.  She becomes convinced they are being murdered.  She hires private detective, Mike Ruiz to find the killer.  

As Nora is working with her patients, trying to help them understand their neuroses, she is also still trying to work out her own psychological issues from her childhood.  Her first patient to die is Howard, which catches her by surprise.  Nora thinks,   "The media presented Howard's demise as accidental - a little chemistry experiment in his home workshop gone wrong. But Freud didn't believe in accident sand neither did I.  Deep down no one believe s in accidents. We all want meaning.  We prefer the illusion of control over what matters in our lives, no matter how irrational the explanation."

This is a story of a neurotic woman who has never resolved her harmful relationship with her father and mother, and is not really able to help her patients.  The people you, as a reader, are most concerned for in the end are her children.  Parents who never resolve their own problems can just pass the problems onto the next generation.