The Lovely Bones

I didn't realize that The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold was about to have a movie made from it and be released next month until I already had this home. Don't ask me how I possibly could have missed it, since it not only has a picture from the movie on the cover but it also says, clear as day, at the top "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE." I have no excuse for not knowing. I was simply unobservant. I guess to be fair I have to say that Weatherford, Texas is to blame. Yes, the entire town of Weatherford, Texas. If they had a decent bookstore (if they had ANY bookstore) in town, I wouldn't have to resort to Target and WalMart when I have a break and have finished my book. And if you've ever seen the selection of books at WalMart, you know it's depressing. I was just about to despair when I picked this up, read the back and thought "hmmm, could be good."

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.

Obviously, the story is told by Susie after she dies. She is a heaven. Not the heaven, but her heaven. A place that is perfect as she believes should be perfect. There are people there that share her vision of heaven but they also have places they go that are solely for themselves, as Susie has her Gazebo. And there are people she never sees in her heaven, because their heaven is so completely different. I thought this was a wonderful way of describing how beautiful and perfect means different things to different people.

I was caught in Susie's story and her longing for her family that kept her from being to move on without them. We get to see her little sister experience things Susie never will and Susie's grief and eventual acceptance of this. Sebold's story is sad and joyful. It is a good sign if I can both laugh out loud and cry heavy tears while reading the same book.

The Angel's Game: Audio

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is the story of David Martin, a young writer in Barcelona, Spain in the early part of the 20th century. Growing up in poverty to a father who could not read and disdained books, David eventually finds a small group a book lovers who encourage his desire to be a writer. Through the years he is contacted by a mysterious French publisher, Andreas Corelli, who wants David to write an even more mysterious book. He life, his home, and his friends all become suspect as he discovers exactly what he is supposed to write and the writers before him who have not been able to accomplish the task....

I was completely engrossed with this story and found myself often already home from my long drive without remembering the journey. I was intrigued by the mystery David finds himself in the middle of and kept discovering that what I had predicted would happen, didn't. And that always makes me gloriously happy. When an author sets up a storyline to go in one direction and misleads you into thinking it's going another, it doesn't matter what the genre: This is a good book. If that can be done well, the author deserves many prizes and much fame, both of which Zafon has received. I don't like being able to predict a story too soon, that makes it boring. When the moment of realization came for me near the end of this story, it was so stunning I actually had to turn the cd off and take a break from the book to digest what I had just learned. It came out of nowhere but made complete sense. Zafon had been setting it up all along but so carefully, it was so hidden, that I never saw it coming. Beautiful is all I can say.

If there is one thing that I have to criticize, that would be the pace of the first part of the book. Up until right before the start of Part 2, it is fairly slow. The early years of David's life and his interactions with Christina and Pedro are sometimes redundant. But for me, this was not enough to detract from the greatness of the book. Yes, I am pouring out the love of this book shamelessly. I even decided to wait a week before writing my review so I could try to write a more objective review. Not possible. Simply put, I loved this book. The only thing that happened with time to think on it, was that I came to like the ending. At first I felt cheated but as I put more time from when I listened to it, I grow to think it is the ONLY way it could have possibly ended. In Part 1, I was beginning to wonder if it was supposed to be a modern telling of Dracula, with David playing the part of Jonathan Harker. This may and may not have some validity but I won't say anymore on that. Sadly, the truth of Corelli is never told. We are left to make our own inferences. But I have an idea and I'll guess that I'm not far off.

Best Friends Forever

Here I go reviewing another chick-lit book. They are so perfect for listening to while driving. I hate driving and they take me away and make me laugh. I have come to believe that sometimes fluff is good, even if I would be bored just sitting on my couch reading it. It's not boring listening.

Jennifer Weiner's book Best Friends Forever is the story of childhood friends Addie and Valerie who have not spoken to each other since senior year of high school. On the night of their 10 year reunion, Valerie unexpectedly drops by Addie's house in need of her help. Though suspicious and (still) angry, Addie is also secretly delighted that her best friend has come back to her.

I found Addie to whiny and Valerie to be vapid and the situation slightly unbelievable which by themselves could have made this book get an F from Miss Tonya but together made the story funny and diverting on my boring drive. I suggest if you like this genre of books go out and read right away. You will not be disappointed. Except I was. The end was a big let down. Weiner had this great story and this funny relationship between her two characters and it's obvious she spent a lot of time deciding which direction to go next: make it a little more crazy or give the reader a breather for a minute. She even came up with a great ending. The problem was she kept going after the book should have ended. I guess she wanted to have the "happily ever after" ending where everyone gets what they want and the girl gets the awesome boy and everyone kisses and is "happy." This ending just rang hollow and I wish she hadn't tried to do that. Sometimes as a reader I like a little bit of a vague future that I can picture for myself.

Mystic River

It's been awhile since I've posted a review a book. I believe the last one was Golden City and even then I had not blogged about a many books for awhile before that. I'm going to post a few over the next few days so don't start running virus scans wondering if I was infected with a blogging virus and you will be next. This is for real.



Mystic River is probably the most widely known book by Dennis Lehane. I know I hadn't read anything by him before this and I'm not sure I would have if it wasn't for the movie that came out a few years ago with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins (two of my favorite actors ever). Oddly enough I don't really remember much about the movie, except something terrible happened to one of the boys when he was young, there's a dead girl, and maybe the two are connected somehow. You'd think a movie like this with these wonderful actors would have made a bigger impression. I do know that I liked it a lot, enough to think maybe I'd try reading the book.

Apparently, Dennis Lehane is known for writing crime dramas. I don't know why this surprised me, since that's basically what Mystic River is, but I have a vision in my head of crime drama books and it's not a good one. It usually involves some cop or private investigator with a terrible personal life, going through some horrible shit of his own while he investigates a terribly boring murder of a young girl that I solved in the first 30 pages. Except for the last part, Mystic River on the surface fits that to a tee. It's all the underlying factors and relationships that make this book so much more than that. I would have placed this book not with mysteries and crime dramas, but with general fiction. If you could categorize the large general fiction section down I might place this book with ones by Wally Lamb and Jodi Picoult. It's the relationships between people that is the draw for me and Mystic River has those relationships knocking into each other on every page.

At the heart of the novel are three boys: Jimmy, Sean, and Dave. When they are 11 years old, Dave is kidnapped by two child molesters while playing with Jimmy and Sean. This incident is a constant factor in their lives for many years, even after they are grown with children of their own. When they are in their 30s, Jimmy's daughter is brutally murdered and Sean is the lead investigator on the case. Jimmy and Dave are now related through marriage and the three men are thrust together again by this tragedy.

You could not find three more different men than Jimmy, Sean, and Dave and if circumstances had not brought them together, I doubt any of them would be friends with the other. We all have these people in our lives, people who are friends simply because they were around when we were children or because we see them everyday at work. In a different situation, we wouldn't have two words to say to each other outside of everyday stranger-small-talk (which I personally hate and don't do very well as a consequence). It seemed to me these men would have made a fascinating story without the death and search for a killer. It almost felt as if the murder investigation was the secondary story to the interaction of these childhood friends. And that makes a good book no matter what the genre.