= Excellent
= Good/Very Good
= Okay read
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= Ugh! Don't waste your time.
Archive for August 5th, 2008
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Rules For Saying Goodbye - Book Review
Eleven. Call a taxi. Have too much pride to phone your brother or your best friend. Leave in tears, broken, and make sure his next-door neighbor sees you. She is a stripper and she will comfort him. You will be safe knowing that he’s in the arms of the stripper and not his assistant. Do not go back to retrieve things you have forgotten, like your climbing shoes or laundry you left in the dryer. once you are gone, be gone for good. -From Rules For Saying Goodbye, Rule #11, page 126-
The fictional Katherine Taylor (not to be confused with the living, breathing Katherine Taylor) grows up the daughter of an orthopedic surgeon in Fresno. She learns her first lessons about life by eavesdropping on her mother’s phone conversations, and at the age of twelve is shipped off to Boston to attend a prestigious boarding school. The novel quickly unfolds from there as the reader follows Kate into young adulthood, meeting her whacky family and fascinating friends along the way as she moves to New York seeking herself in the bars (as both a writer who bartends, and a patron), and finding her share of unsuitable men.
The Rules for Saying Goodbye is a coming of age novel of sorts, packaged to appeal to women, but certainly not classic chick-lit (I had my husband laughing until tears ran down his face when I read him Chapter 15 of the novel out loud). Taylor writes brilliant dialogue and her characters are sharply observed if not quite a bit dysfunctional. Perhaps the funniest parts of this novel are those centered around Kate’s family. Taylor is skilled at striking a chord to which most people will relate:
In families, a lot of time can pass without anyone realizing any time has passed. What seems like last Christmas or the Christmas before may have actually been a Christmas from twelve years ago. Hurt feelings and forgettable spats can go on for decades in families. -From Rules for Saying Goodbye, page 62-
Or following the protagonist’s grandmother’s funeral:
Afterwards, at lunch in the church reception hall, my father and two priests had to sit between my mother and her feuding siblings. These were feuds that had taken fifty years to develop, based on the sort of animosity that must begin in childhood. An agglomeration of unresolved arguments and slights: the time Uncle Dick slapped my mother back and forth across the face when she had refused to leave a wedding with him forty years ago, the time he bloodied her lip for dating a Japanese boy, the dozens of times Aunt Lou neglected to send invitations to Auntie Petra and Grandma for birthday or Christmas parties, the time Uncle Dick tred to discipline my brother Richard, his namesake, by pinning him against the garage with the car. Also, my mother was still angry with Auntie Petra for feeding her lard when she was eight. -From Rules for Saying Goodbye, page 129-130-
Rules for Saying Goodbye is funny, heartwarming, and perceptive. Sometimes there are books you hate to see end - this novel turned out to be one of those for me. This was Katherine Taylor’s first novel. I’m looking forward to more from her.
To read a wonderful interview of this author, visit The Emerging Writer’s Network.
Highly recommended.
Mailbox Monday - August 4, 2008
It’s Tuesday, and I’m late for Mailbox Monday because I worked 13 hours yesterday and fell into bed last night, asleep before I hit the pillow. So, I’m posting a day late - what arrived in your mailbox this week?
Here is what I got:
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Thank you to the author of this book for contacting me to read and review this book on my blog. Ms. Etzioni-Halevy is the author of two other novels - The Song of Hannah AND The Garden of Ruth. All three novels are historical fictions. The Triumph of Deborah was released by Plume in February 2008 and has received some good reviews. The product description reads:
In ancient Israel, war is looming. Deborah, a highly respected leader, has coerced the warrior Barak into launching a strike against the neighboring Canaanites. Against all odds he succeeds, returning triumphantly with Asherah and Nogah, daughters of the Canaanite King, as his prisoners. But military victory is only the beginning of the turmoil, as a complex love triangle develops between Barak and the two princesses. Deborah, recently cast off by her husband, develops a surprising affinity for Barak. Yet she struggles to rebuild her existence on her own terms, while also groping her way toward the greatest triumph of her life.
While I rarely read religious historical fiction, this one looks like it has a wider appeal. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Sweetsmoke, by David Fuller
This Advance Reader’s Edition came to me through the Library Thing Early Reviewers Program. This is Fuller’s first novel. It is due for release in September through Hyperion Books. The blurb on the back says:
In the tradition of March and The Known World, Sweetsmoke is a stunning first novel set during the Civil War, featuring an unforgettable character named Cassius, a slave working on a Virginia tobacco plantation.
Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler
I won this book by participating in the Bookawards I Challenge (thank you Michelle!). This is Anne Tyler’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel about Maggie and Ira who discover ‘how extraordinary their ordinary lives really are…‘ Can’t wait to read it!
That’s it for this week! Visit Marcia at The Printed Page to see what other reader’s found in their mailboxes.