After months of a long, drawn out and stressful legal process, the papers are signed, everything is official and I can now introduce my daughter Neve to everyone! (Neve rhymes with Bev – we chose it because we liked Neve Campbell’s name but she is not named after Neve Campbell.)
She’s cute, stubborn, spunky, independent, and sweet. In other words, she fits right in with her big brothers! She’s only lived with us since January and I already can’t remember a time when she wasn’t here. We are so, so blessed.
In Won’t Back Down, Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a frustrated single mother to a dyslexic child. Her child’s teacher won’t do anything to help her daughter get the special help she needs to overcome her dyslexia and learn how to read. After a lot of persuasion, Jamie enlists the help of another teacher at the school, Nona Alberts (Viola Davis), to help her take control of the school using California’s “parent-trigger” law. With enough parent and teacher signatures, the parents can take over the school, basically turning it into a charter school.
At the beginning of the film, it states that is inspired by true events. By this, they mean that it is loosely based on what could happen if California’s parent-trigger law were used successfully. The actual school and people in this movie are fictional.
I love feel good, inspirational movies about teachers and/or parents turning kids and schools around – Stand and Deliver and The Ron Clark Story are two of my favorite examples. I didn’t get that same inspired feeling from watching Won’t Back Down. For one, the “parent-trigger” law isn’t explained very well and at times it’s unclear what the ultimate goal/plan of Jamie and Nona’s is if the school is taken over.
Also, this film has a strong anti-teachers’ union slant. Coming from a long line of educators, that is not something I can abide – especially when the representation of the teachers’ union in this movie is just not realistic. For instance, I find it very hard to believe that a real union would FORBID teachers from staying after school to help students if that’s what the teachers wanted to do. Also, having tenure does not mean that you don’t have to do your job or that you can abuse students.
At the beginning of the film, Nona is a beaten down, burned out teacher. Davis plays her almost robotically. At times I had trouble understanding her dialogue because it she muttered it so tonelessly. After her fabulous performance in The Help, my expectations of her are high and she didn’t quite meet them in this movie. Holly Hunter also gives a somewhat wooden performance as a union official. In her case, I think that she has too much Botox and it’s impeding her ability to emote. Gyllenhaal was a bright spot in this movie – her portrayal of a single mother was tough, yet optimistic and charming.
I think making an entertaining film based on a complicated legal statute is a tough job and Won’t Back Down wasn’t quite up to it. That’s not to say that I wasn’t entertained but it was hard for me to get past my issues with the plausibility of the plot as a whole.
Won’t Back Down opens in theaters tomorrow.
(I received complimentary tickets for an advance screening of this movie from a publicist.)
When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she’s consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers’ hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she’s devoted her life to preserving.
But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: an illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she’s chosen a caregiver, the inscrutable, Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.
I have mixed feelings about The Forgetting Tree. On the one hand, the prose was lush and poetic. I felt like I was in a melancholy fog right along with Claire as I was reading it. On the other hand, I could not relate to Claire or Minna at all. I think they both were mentally-ill in some way. I never found Minna to be a mysterious enigma – I found her to be crazy and mean. I couldn’t understand why Claire was taken with her – sometimes I felt like it was mostly just because Minna was black and Claire hadn’t been around too many black people in her life. That made me uncomfortable, but that is also just my interpretation of Claire and could be totally off base.
This may be one of those cases where I am too practical for a book. I just wanted Claire to fire Minna and get on with her life. I kept wondering why no one else in her family was intervening – I think it was pretty clear Claire needed some kind of mental help. My problems with the plot got in the way of my enjoyment of the beautiful writing. The descriptions were wonderfully written, I just didn’t care for a lot of what was being described. Although, I didn’t love this book, I think there are people out there who will. If you think that person could be you, come back next week when I’ll be giving away a copy to one of my readers!
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
As far as Gemma is concerned, her days of dating are over. In fact, it’s her job to cater other peoples’ dates, and that’s just fine by her. At thirty-seven, she has her own business, working as a private chef, and her life feels full and secure. She’s got six steady clients that keep her hands full.
There’s Lex, the fussy but fabulous department store owner who loves Oysters Rockefeller and 1950s comfort food; Willa, who needs to lose weight under doctor’s orders but still believes butter makes everything better; a colorful family who may or may not be part of the Russian mob; an überwealthy Georgetown family; the picture-perfect Van Houghtens, whose matriarch is “allergic to everything”; and finally, a man she calls “Mr. Tuesday,” whom she has never met but who she is strangely drawn to.
For Gemma, cooking is predictable. Recipes are certain. Use good ingredients, follow the directions, and you are assured success. Life, on the other hand, is full of variables. So when Gemma’s takes an unexpected turn on a road she always thought was straight and narrow, she must face her past and move on in ways she never would have imagined. Because sometimes in life, all you need is a little hope, a lot of courage, and—oh yes—butter.
When In Doubt Add Butter is a great beach read or in my case, car book. (I like to listen to light, beachy chick-lit books when I’m driving.) Gemma is was so sweet and likeable that I wanted good things to happen for her. The plot is somewhat predictable but that’s almost to be expected in this genre. I knew who Mr. Tuesday was and some other things that would be spoilers if I mentioned them way before Gemma did. However, I think that it may have been the author’s intent for the reader to have some things figured out before Gemma did and then root for Gemma to hurry up and figure it out herself.
The large cast of secondary characters was entertaining and fun. The narrator, Orlagh Cassidy did a great job of giving each person a unique voice that fit his or her personality. The ending wrapped everything up in a nice little package, which I actually liked but I thought it ended too soon. I would have loved a sequel instead of an epilogue – I didn’t want to let Gemma go and I wanted know the details of what happened in the year between the last chapter and the epilogue.
If you are a fan of chick-lit, then this is a great book for you.
Click play to listen to an excerpt of the audio book or download it here.
Meet the Keller family, five generations of firstborn women—an unbroken line of daughters—living together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California.
Anna, the family matriarch, is 112 and determined to become the oldest person in the world. An indomitable force, strong in mind and firm in body, she rules Hill House, the family home she shares with her daughter Bets, granddaughter Callie, great-granddaughter Deb, and great-great-granddaughter Erin. Though they lead ordinary lives, there is an element of the extraordinary to these women: the eldest two are defying longevity norms. Their unusual lifespans have caught the attention of a geneticist who believes they hold the key to breakthroughs that will revolutionize the aging process for everyone.
But Anna is not interested in unlocking secrets the Keller blood holds. She believes there are some truths that must stay hidden, including certain knowledge about her origins that she has carried for more than a century. Like Anna, each of the Keller women conceals her true self from the others. While they are bound by blood and the house they share, living together has not always been easy. And it is about to become more complicated now that Erin, the youngest, is back, alone and pregnant, after two years abroad with an opera company. Her return and the arrival of the geneticist who has come to study the Keller family ignites explosive emotions that these women have kept buried and uncovers revelations that will shake them all to their roots.
The Roots of the Olive Tree alternates between the viewpoints of all five women. In doing so, I felt like I got just a taste of each woman’s life and a few hints at why each had the personality that she had. I would have liked to know even more about each woman’s past life. This book was more a slice of all of their present lives. Of course, it did venture into the past to reveal the secrets that some of the women were harboring. While I found the secrets interesting, I didn’t find them to be “explosive” as the blurb indicates. And all of these women were so tough and even-keeled most of the time that they didn’t seem to be phased much when they found out the secrets either – they definitely didn’t seem to be shaken to their roots.
I enjoyed reading this book but I felt like it had unrealized potential. There were some loose ends that could have been developed and I think would have added more dimension. Without spoiling anything, I think Deb and Erin’s relationship could have been explored more and I also would have liked to know what happened with the trip the ladies were planning. I also didn’t fully understand the symbolism of the tortoise in the story (you’ll know what I mean if you read it) but grasping that sort of thing is not always easy for me. If you have thoughts about the tortoise, please share!
Even though I found the story to be somewhat different from what the book jacket promised, I still found this book to be a pleasant and quick read. There is a short e-book prequel (that I have not read) called Under the Olive Tree that is free in the Kindle store as of this writing.
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
The stories in Mumbai Noir depict the many ways in which the city’s ever-present shadowy aspects often force themselves onto the lives of ordinary people. They offer tales of women being stalked by psychopath Romeos, of ordinary men flirting with death in dance bars, and of families falling through the crack of the city’s enduring communal divide. What emerges is the sense of a city that, despite its new name and triumphant tryst with capitalism, is yet to heal from the wounds of the early ’90s, and from all the subsequent acts of havoc wreaked within its precincts by both local and outside forces.
It’s always a challenge to adequately review a short story collection, especially when the stories are each by a different author, because the quality of the stories can vary so widely. That’s why I normally don’t review them. I made an exception for Mumbai Noir because I am intrigued by all things Indian and try to read as much about that country and its people as I can.
The stories in Mumbai Noir are definitely focused on the darker side of the city, as the title implies. Some are morality tales and some are just melancholy. Overall, I found them entertaining and enlightening. There were a few stories about hirjas, which are sort of like what Westerners think of as transgendered people but not quite. I enjoyed these stories in particular because the hirja culture is both fascinating and confusing to me and I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about it.
There were two stories that I didn’t understand at all – At Leopold Cafe and They. At Leopold Cafe is a Twilight Zone type story that has something to do with a fountain of youth elixir that was confusing to me. It jumped back and forth in time and I couldn’t follow it. They is a detective story about a murder in a gym. I couldn’t follow the detective’s logic as far as how he figured out who the killer was.
A lot of the stories reference historical events in India that I don’t have a good knowledge in yet. I was still able to enjoy them but probably would have gotten more out of them if I was more familiar with Indian history. There was a glossary of terms in the back which I appreciated. Most of the unfamiliar words could be found there but not all of them.
Overall, I think this is a book worth reading if you like stories about the dark and seedy side of big cities.
Plagued by guilt, paralyzed by shame, Jinx has spent the years since her mother’s death alone, estranged from her husband, withdrawn from her son, and entrenched in a childhood home filled with fierce and violent memories. When Lemon, an old family friend, appears unbidden at the door, he seduces Jinx with a heady mix of powerful storytelling and tender care. What follows is a tense and passionate weekend, as the two join forces to unravel the tragedy that binds them. Jinx has long carried the burden of the past; now, she must relive her mother’s last days, confront her grief head-on, and speak the truth as only she knows it.
This was a very dark book and Jinx was a very damaged main character and narrator. Jinx and Lemon spend the weekend sharing their perspectives on Jinx’s mother’s murder with each other. Through flashbacks, it becomes apparent how Jinx grew into such a cold, almost robotic adult. She is not a good mother and the part when her four-year old son comes over for a visit was hard to read. I was left wondering how someone like Jinx came to get married and have a son in the first place. However, the focus of this novel is the immediate time period around Jinx’s mother’s death and the weekend that Lemon comes to visit fourteen years later. I think not including much information on Jinx’s life in the time between her mother’s death and Lemon’s visit makes the weekend seem that much more intense.
Even though I didn’t really like Jinx, I thought her character was well-developed and the reasons she turned out to be such a dysfunctional adult were definitely authentic. The domestic abuse storyline was tough to read but realistic. Jinx and Lemon put each other through the wringer – their weekend together is like an intensive therapy session. I enjoyed the way the author revealed the events of the past slowly and thoroughly as Jinx and Lemon open up to each other.
The writing was beautiful yet melancholy. I can see why A Cupboard Full of Coats was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:
Things can always get worse.
Blackout is the final book in the Newsflesh Trilogy, although I did notice when entering this book on FictFact that there are a couple of novellas in the series that I haven’t read yet. I’m not sure how I feel about this trend of so-called trilogies being supplemented with e-book only novellas but that’s a rant for another day.
I have to say that while I enjoyed Blackout, I didn’t think it was as good as the first two books and I was not satisfied with the ending. I’m not going to give any spoilers but I can say that the last part of the book wrapped up way to quickly and didn’t make sense to me. This time I know it’s not just me, several other reviewers had the same problem with the end that I did. Also, Shaun was just as annoyingly repetitive in this book as he was in Deadline – constantly reminding us that he’s crazy when his behavior is reminder enough. Finally, there wasn’t as much action or suspense as in the first two books.
If you are a fan of this series, you will want to read this book. You may like it more than I did but even if you don’t it’s still worth reading to find out how everything ends. If you recall, Deadline ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger and it gets addressed right away in Blackout. That storyline was my favorite of this book. It’s hard to say more without spoilers.
I’m looking forward to reading the e-book novellas, I believe one is a prequel and one fits in between Feed and Deadline.
Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.
Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him—the White Man with no fear of snakes—and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?
The Lower River was Conversati-ohm’s (one of my monthly book clubs) August pick. We had a robust discussion about it even though not everyone liked it. I had mixed feelings about it myself. I didn’t care for most of the characters and that made it hard to like the book overall. Ellis is so selfish and self-righteous that I couldn’t bring myself to have any sympathy for him when his trip to Malawi didn’t go as planned. At one point, he needs a letter delivered and something extremely awful happens to the deliverer. When Ellis goes to see the person who was supposed to deliver the letter after the awful thing happens, all he can ask about is whether the awful thing happened before the letter got to its destination. That scene literally made me sick to my stomach.
However, Ellis’s selfishness did make me think a lot about Westerners coming to “help” people in third-world countries. What is the true motivation for helping? Is everyone helping out of the goodness of their hearts or because of the feelings of superiority one might get from helping? Are we giving them the help they need or the help WE THINK they need?
Even though I didn’t really enjoy reading this book, it did end up being a good book for discussion purposes and one that I thought about for a while after I finished it.
(Trivia: Paul Theroux is Jennifer Aniston’s fiance, Justin Theroux’s, uncle.)
Last week, I reviewed Glass Boys. It was a fantastic book. Today, I am pleased to be able to offer a copy to one of my readers with a United States or Canadian address (no PO Boxes please). Just fill out the form below before the giveaway closes on September 10, 2012 at 11:59 pm CST. Good luck!
