The Woman Beyond the Sea

The synagogue book club read The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi three years ago. We all loved it. When we saw Yishai-Levi had written another novel, we wanted to read it. I'm going to miss our next book club meeting, but I try to read along anyway. I liked The Woman Beyond the Sea but I didn't love it. I think it's because the story started a little too slowly for me. Once I got to the second half of the novel, I thought it was a page turner. But it took awhile to get there.

Lily and her daughter, Eliya, have a difficult relationship. They've always had a difficult relationship. Shaul, Lily's husband and Eliya's father, keep the family together at an emotional cost to him, too. 

Jewish baby Lily was abandoned by the woman who gave birth to her when she was a few days old. At a convent. As Lily grew up, she took comfort in sitting with a picture of Mary and Jesus, but on some level, she felt like she never fit in there. That not fitting in and something missing from her life follows her through until Eliya is a young woman.

Eliya, likewise, feels like something is missing from her life. Like her mother, she feels that she's missed out on the love of a mother. It's evident in many of the choices she makes during her university days.

Both women need to come to moments of self-acceptance and perhaps forgiveness.

Lily's story is told third person while Eliya's story is told first person. But it's definitely both of their stories. The timing jumps around a little bit, going as far back Palestine during the early days under the British Mandate up through the time just following the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The history of Palestine and then Israel is essential to the plot. (Oh, how I'd love to get back to Tel Aviv and stroll along the beach.

I gave this novel 3 stars on goodreads.com, rounded down from 3.5 and it was only that low because of the slow start. However, I would still highly recommend this novel for book clubs. I think it will lead to a great discussion.
 

Happy Place

Emily Henry's latest, Happy Place, is another book that could be considered a beach read. (The meat of the novel doesn't crop up until nearly the end of the novel.) As such, I started to listen to this one at the beach. It was a great novel to listen to as I was at my happy place.

Harriet's story is told from "real life" and her "happy place," with her happy place being mostly an over-the-top beach "cabin" on the coast in Maine where Harriet and her two college roommates have spent a week every summer. for over 10 years  Over the years, romantic partners are included. The "cabin" is owned by Sabrina's father. His wife #3 (or was it wife #4) thinks it's time that he sells the "cabin" so this is the last summer trip the college roommates will be able to enjoy.

Harriet's happy place becomes a bit less happy (understatement) when she spots her former fiancé, Wyn, at the cabin. What is he doing there? Harriet hasn't told anyone that she and Wyn have broken up. Because this will be the final week at the cabin, the couple decides to pretend that they are still together, as to not ruin the weekend.

The first 90% of the novel is pure fluff, some of it a bit repetitive. And you start to wonder how someone who was able to make it through medical school (Harriet is in a residency in her quest to become a brain surgeon) is so flighty and wishy-washy. For me, the end of the novel, when we really figure out what's going on with Harriet and Wyn, that's where there's some real substance with an important message. A message that gave me satisfaction to hear.

If you like Emily Henry, you should enjoy her latest.

 

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

 

I love Judy Blume so I'm still amazed that I lived so long without reading her semi-autobiographical novel, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. It wasn't until I came across the title on a banned book list - and why it was being banned - that I knew that I had to read it. (It took me until a year ago to read probably her most frequently banned book, Forever.)

Sally is a young girl living in New Jersey in the 1940s when her brother gets sick and the family needs to move to Miami Beach for the winter, for the sake of her brother's health. Her dad needs to stay back in New Jersey to work so Sally moves to Florida with her mother, brother Douglas and their grandmother, Ma Fanny.

My earliest memories of Miami Beach were in the mid-1960s but there was a lot more similar about Miami Beach in the late 1940s that I'd chuckle over. There was one scene about having to wear a bathing cap into the pool that could have easily been written 20 years later about my cousin sitting by her grandmother Fanny's pool on Miami Beach.

Sally is hesitant about the move but between the new friends she makes, both in her apartment building and at school, and her wild imagine, Florida turns out to not be so bad after all.

Why is this book being banned? Because Sally imagines that Hitler is living undercover as a Jewish old man in her apartment building? And because she imagines him captured - or dead? That is so objectionable - how? Or by whom? I just don't get it.

Anyway, I loved the book and I'd recommend it. Especially to little girls with wonderful imaginations.

Book Lovers

How could a book lover who also loves Hallmark movies not love Emily Henry's latest, Book Lovers?

After my last finish (The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle), I needed a book that was going to captivate me and that I'd be able to tear through. Book Lovers was that book. 

Emily Henry starts the novel with her character talking about Hallmark movies. I was hooked! And truly, the plot of the novel could easily be a Hallmark movie. Nora is an intense book agent in NYC. She's very cutthroat, her clients love her for what she can achieve, but they call her "the shark" behind her back. The only relationship she is able to hold on to is with her younger sister, Libby, and her sister's family.

She approaches Charlie, a NYC editor, to see if he'd be interested in a novel by one of her hot authors. Charlie is not interested in that at all. He thought the author's last novel was terrible. And their meeting did not go well at all.

Story then jumps ahead a few years. Libby is pregnant with her 3rd child and needs a little break before the baby comes. She invites - coerces - Nora to accompany her to Sunshine Falls, NC, the setting of one of the novels that Nora represented. The one that Charlie seemed to hate. Libby has a list of things that Nora needs to accomplish on this month-long getaway. Silly things like wearing a flannel shirt, dating a local, riding a horse. Silly things like that.

It's Nora and Libby's first morning in NC. Libby is being a pregnant slug so Nora walks into town and who does she spy in the coffee shop but a guy who looks exactly like Charlie. What do you know? It IS Charlie! They get thrown together repeatedly. The banter between these two main characters is what makes the book so enjoyable. It is just such smart, witty banter. And they can read each other like a book!

I really enjoyed Beach Read. Enjoyed People You Meet on Vacation even more. I loved Book Lovers. If I need a little break from heavier reading and Emily Henry has a new romance novel out, that is what I will choose to read. Highly recommend.

 

One Italian Summer

It wasn't until I was partway into One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle that I realized that this is the third book in a row that I'm reading that has to do with women (all younger than I) coming to terms with the death of her mother. On the week leading up to the anniversary of my mother's death. What are the chances?

One Italian Summer's main character, Katy, has just lost her mother. Like the two previous books I've read, Katy is trying to come to terms with her life, with her marriage, with her career. She  decides that taking the mother/daughter trip to Italy that she and her mother had planned to take together, that her mother had meticulously planned, might give her the distance from her life to figure out what should come next.

By now you know that I'm a sucker for books that take place in Italy. I'm still trying to recapture what I've lost by having to cancel our trip to Italy in October 2020. Of all the books I've read recently that take place in Italy, this gave me the truest flavor for what it's like to be an American visiting Italy. Katy's mother, Carol, had spent a summer in Positano as a young woman, and she wanted to share that with her daughter. Off Katy trots to Positano, alone. The descriptions of the scenery, of the food, of the people Katy comes in contact with, brought back memories of my time on the Amalfi Coast. (The only thing that disturbed me was that Katy chose to relax on the beach in Capri rather than explore the island - and drink limoncello!)

In some ways, this reminded me of Faye, Faraway as 30-year old Katy gets to know 30-year old Carol. I won't tell you any more about that.

Katy has so many questions for her mother which brought to mind things about my mother that I wish I knew more about. At least by the end of the novel, Katy is able to get some answers. This isn't exactly a romance novel, but it sort of is. Romance isn't usually my thing. However, I really enjoyed this novel. Now I want to go back to Positano!
 

The Shift: 7 Powerful Mindset Changes for Lasting Weight Loss

As a lifetime member of WW (previously Weight Watchers) who got serious about returning to my goal weight last year, I'd gotten several WW emails about The Shift and went to a virtual book signing online to hear more about it.

Gary Foster, PhD is the Chief Scientific Officer at WW. (He also happened to get part of his education at the University of Pennsylvania, my alma mater.) He's been studying weight-related issues for the entirety of his professional career.

This is not your typical diet book. It's not about what to eat or not eat. Well, maybe it is since I do recall Dr. Foster writing (and I'm paraphrasing here) if you want the cheese, you should eat the cheese. Which kind of sums up the point of the book. It's not about what you eat or when you eat it. It's making mindful eating a part of your regular life. It's not at all about being good or being bad. It's about being mindful.

Because of how long I've been on WW (many, many years) and how much reading I've done in the past, there was nothing at all earth shattering written here. But Dr. Foster has a nice conversational tone and includes personal anecdotes from others who struggle with their weight.

I started reading this book while on Christmas vacation. It definitely did make me feel better about the choices that I'd been making over the few days before I started reading. And I am positive that reading this helped me get 100% back on track with my eating as soon as I woke up the morning after we arrived back home. (Why my body craves either pizza or a grilled cheese after arriving home from a longer trip is beyond me. I came home, ate my grilled cheese, went to bed and was back on track the following morning. Easily. Because even though I hadn't yet finished the book, I had started my shift in mindset. That was vacation. I was faced with foods that I'm not faced with at home. I didn't want to feel deprived while away celebrating. However, I made mindful choices. I was selective about what I ate and didn't eat it all. I was extremely mindful of what went in my mouth. I felt good about my choices.

The Shift was a reminder that I need to be kind to myself, I need to be grateful for even small things. I need to focus on positive behaviors and positive changes. And most of all, a bad day doesn't make me a failure.

I'm glad I was able to get The Shift from the library. I figured I'd read it and if I felt it was a book that I'd turn to time and again that I'd buy a copy. For me, it's not that kind of book. I luckily got the book at the absolutely perfect time for me. I was out of my routine, in celebratory mode. I'm not sure if the book would have resonated quite so much with me had I read it when I was still pretty much locked-down during my first few months back on the program during winter/early spring 2021.

If you need an extra little something to help you shift your thinking, I would highly recommend The Shift.

Better to Trust

It's always fun to win something, right? There was a giveaway for an Advanced Reader Copy of Heather Frimmer's new  novel, Better to Trust. Imagine my delight when I was notified that I won one of two copies of the book being given away. Since I've been doing most of my reading on the Kindle - and this was a paperback - I waited to start until we headed to the beach in September. I was engaged from page one. It took me longer to finish than it should have because once home, I really had to find time to finish a paperback book. This weekend was that time!

Once trust is broken, how easy is it to get it back? Better to Trust is a family drama. Alison has a bleed on the brain, needs surgery, decides to go with her brother-in-law, a famed neurosurgeon, even though a few people suggested that it was a terrible idea for Grant to operate on a family member. Meanwhile, Grant had his own secrets which made him truly not a good choice for the one to perform the surgery.

While Grant and his wife, Cynthia, Alison's sister, are preoccupied worrying about Alison, their daughter Sadie feels rejected. She's also really missing her Aunt Alison. Sadie makes a new friend who is not the best influence. Lots of trust issues erupt once Sadie and Piper start spending more time together.

Meanwhile, after surgery a rift develops between Alison and Cynthia who had previously been very close. What will it take to repair their relationship?

Finally, there's the issue of trust between Alison and her husband, Michael. Alison has got a secret, but does she blow things up while Michael has been so attentive to her during her rehabilitation after surgery?

I got sucked into the story from the first page. A well-developed story with interesting characters. My favorite character of the whole novel was Nate, the elementary school-aged son of the caregiver Alison had after she got home from the hospital. He reminded me of how much I miss having kids in my life.

I do have one complaint about the book related to the structure. The story had two converging timelines, starting in March, when Alison first got sick, and then another timeline several months later. The two timelines weren't distinct enough and sometimes it got confusing about what time period I was reading about, even though each chapter heading was dated. I think it might have been easier to read if the story had been told chronologically. Small complaint.

I'd recommend this one.
 

Vacation Read 1: People We Meet on Vacation

Doesn't People We Meet on Vacation sound like a great book to read on vacation? It was, even if Emily Henry's newest novel, People We Meet on Vacation, wasn't as much as the people that you meet on vacation. More about  the people you go on vacation with.

Poppy and Alex meet on the first day of college. They're coincidentally from the same small town. The two of them couldn't have been more opposite. Then... on the last day of freshman year, the driver that Poppy was sharing a ride home with was none other than Alex. They connected on the ride home and spent time over the summer vacation together.

Poppy has never felt at home in their small town which probably contributed to her strong sense of wanderlust. She convinces Alex to go on vacation with her. And that starts a new tradition. Every summer after, the two of them go on vacation together. They travel on the cheap until Poppy gets her dream job as a travel writer. She actually gets paid to "go on vacation." Then she's able to treat Alex to a great trip on her job. For a few more years. Until things get weird between the two of them and the summer vacations end.

She's got her dream job, living in her dream city, but she's just not happy. Her best friend, Rachel, asks her what she felt was missing in her life that used to make her happy. She realizes that without the possibility of a summer vacation with Alex, that's what she is lacking. Out of the blue, she texts him and asks him if he's free to go away for a few days. I'll spare you the rest of the story.

I loved reading about some of the adventures that Poppy and Alex had on their trips. There's a loose reference to the title when Poppy is able to be whomever she wants to be while on vacation. Almost like a character. And as much as she loves seeing new places, she loves the interactions that she has with people while she's traveling. I'm not much of a romance novel reader so this whole creating a new persona to interact with people you're going to meet was my favorite part of the novel.

I read Henry's novel, Beach Read, in October. Of the two, I preferred People We Meet on Vacation.
 

These Tangled Vines

 

The other night, I decided to drop Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It was the March book for my New Jersey book club. I hadn't realized that the book was so long until I got the book from the library's waitlist a few days before the book club meeting. I got about one-third of the way through the book before the meeting, and I've been going back to it between the fiction books that I've been reading. Without the motivation to talk about the book, I've kind of lost my desire to finish it. It's interesting enough, and I love Goodwin's writing style. But our times right now are turbulent enough and I need a book that will distract me.

When I finished Kindred the other night, I had nothing on deck from the library to read. I went to my kindle app and checked my Amazon Prime first reads that I haven't yet read. These Tangled Vines by Julianne Maclean was my May selection. The reviews on Goodreads were great. I'm still mourning over my canceled Italy trip from last fall which is why I'd selected this particular title in the first place.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads:

If Fiona has learned anything in life, it’s how to keep a secret—even from the father who raised her. She is the only person who knows about her late mother’s affair in Tuscany thirty years earlier, and she intends to keep it that way…until a lawyer calls with shocking news: her biological father has died and left her an incredible inheritance—along with two half siblings.

Fiona travels to Italy, where the family is shocked to learn of her existence and desperate to contest her share of the will. While the mystery of her mother’s affair is slowly unraveled, Fiona must navigate through tricky family relationships and tense sibling rivalries. Fiona both fears and embraces her new destiny as she searches for the truth about the fateful summer her mother spent in Italy and the father she never knew.

Spilling over with the sumptuous flavors and romance of Tuscany, These Tangled Vines takes readers on a breathtaking journey of love, secrets, sacrifice, courage—and most importantly, the true meaning of family.

These Tangled Wines isn't full-blown women's fiction nor is it a full-blown romance. I'd say it's more about life choices that one has to make as a result of romance. I loved so many of the pieces of the novel but was disappointed when in my mind, they didn't add up to enough. Being my nitpicky self, there were three details that no one critiquing noticed but that bugged me. Tallahassee is not near a Gulf beach. (Why was from Fiona from Tallahassee anyway?) There was a lot of coffee drinking in this novel. But percolator? If an Italian offers you "coffee" and you say yes, you will get an espresso. And in the 1980s, writers weren't parking themselves at coffee shops in Italy to spend all day writing. In fact, in 2015, the last time I was in Italy, I can only think of two "coffee shops" that I stopped into where sitting and writing even for a short while would be a possibility.

What I loved the most was when the "family" that worked at the winery in the summer of 1986 gathered together outside to have dinner. The food, the wine, the camaraderie... and I could feel the atmosphere. I wanted to be there.

I can't recommend this  novel nor would I not recommend it. For me, it was a nice break from what I've been reading. 

When can I go to Italy again???

Okay, let me get this off my chest straightaway. Beach Read, the title, the cover, totally misleading! I knew from reading the summaries that Emily Henry's Beach Read was about two writers, each suffering from writer's block. That's why I picked up the book. I thought the fact that the setting was a beach was going to be a bonus. I love the beach. I love reading about the beach. This novel had so few references to the beach and almost no scenes that took place on the beach. Like I said, totally misleading.

I'm not a romance reader, typically, unless the romance is between a divorced mother of three or an older woman. But Beach Read was the right book for  the right time for me. Just how many tell all political books can one person read in a row. I enjoyed the snarking repartee between January and Augustus. I enjoyed the friendship between January and Shadi. I wouldn't say I really cared about the characters, but I was curious about them and how they ended up where they were at the start of the story. This was an easy, comfortable read.

Now I can get back to reading something a bit more serious. 

28 Summers

I’m still very conflicted over my thoughts regarding Elin Hilderbrand’s latest novel, 28 Summers more than 24 hours after I finished reading it.

It was an easy, pleasant quick read. It was a romance. Perhaps it was a beach read, but I’m not really sure.

The writing in this novel evoked the beach far more than Summerof ’69, which I read earlier this summer. In fact, the beach felt like a character in 28 Summers. As a beach lover, I appreciated that.

Each chapter was a year between 1993 and 2020. She started each chapter with a recap of news highlights from that year. Being a current events junky, I did particularly like that. I especially love what she wrote for 2001. I’m not going to copy the entire thing, but after recollections of 

“A Tuesday morning with a crystalline sky…” she writes, “If there’d been anything else we cared about that year before this happened, it was now debris. It became part of what we lost.”

Now for what I didn’t like. First my small issue. I’m not sure why Hilderbrand thought it was necessary to let us know that Mallory dies at the end of the book right at the very beginning.

My bigger issue was the fact that this was a story about adultery (I hope I’m not laying out a spoiler). The story line revolves around the old movie,"Same Time Next Year." An even bigger issue was that there rarely seemed to be any guilt about the cheating. Won’t go into more detail here, but I found that disheartening.

Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this beachy novel, but if adultery is not your thing, steer clear.

The Book of Negroes

 Since being "safer at home," I've mostly been reading e-books. So when a neighbor dropped off this book that she thought I might enjoy, I decided to save it for my beach vacation knowing I'd want to read outside... and that my iPad isn't the greatest way to read books out in the sunlight. I'd never heard of the book but was assured by my friend that I'd like it.

Someone Knows My Name is an older historical novel by Lawrence Hill. After reading it, I am surprised that I'd never come across this novel before. It's the story of Aminata, an 11-year old African girl, kidnapped from her homeland by slavers in the mid-1700s. She is marched over many months to coastal Africa from her home further inland where she is put on a slave ship headed towards South Carolina. She started out as a slave on an indigo plantation, eventually gets traded to an administrative type in the indigo industry. She ends up in New York City during the Revolutionary War, and then gets rewarded for her service to the king of England with passage to Nova Scotia and hope for a fresh start. Life continues to be hard and full of prejudice. Meena agrees to join with British abolitionists who are determined to create a colony in Africa, Sierra Leone, which former slaves can become "adventurers" and experience freedom for the first time. 

Meena, feeling like she'd lost everything that was every important to her decides that going to Sierra Leone will be her opportunity to go home. The home that she's longed for since she was first kidnapped many years earlier. Home is not exactly what she imagined, but she and the abolitionists realize the importance of Meena telling the story of her life. That brings her from Africa to England.

This is a sweeping saga in the life of a fictional slave. It was exceptionally told. It wasn't so much a novel about slavery as about the life of this one fictionalized woman. But I was either made aware of things in the history of slavery that I wasn't familiar with or that I'd forgotten all about. I'd highly recommend this novel.

Letters for Emily

I'm a sucker for an epistolary novel, and that's what made me grab Camron Wright's novel, Letters for Emily from a recent library sale. I went on the final day of the library sale when you can fill a grocery bag with all the books you can for just $5. I selected a few books that I'd heard of and wanted to read, planning to read them first and then bring them to the beach condo that we rent out for our guests to read. I then promptly forgot about the bag of books.

Until yesterday. I needed to photograph a stack of something for one of my daily photo challenges and thought that those long forgotten books would stack up nicely.

Yesterday was the 67th day in the house due to covid-19 and I was feeling a bit restless. So after I photographed the books, I picked up this slim novel, thumbed thru it, and decided to sit down and start it. A few hours later, I had finished the entire novel.

It's a very sweet book. A grumpy old man dealing with dementia clearly loves his favorite grandchild, Emily. It's also important for him that his family remember him as his better self, the one he was before he got sick. So each day, during his lucid moments, Harry works on a book for Emily.

After his death, Emily's mom finds three copies of a handmade book of poems created especially for 7-year old Emily. She keeps one copy for Emily, gives another to her estranged husband, Bob, who is Harry's son. The third copy goes to Bob's sister, Michelle. Each poem in the book holds the clue to being able to open a file on Harry's computer where there is a letter written to Emily. Each letter is meant to give Emily a life lesson. It's clear that each letter is meant to teach a lesson to all the members of Harry's family.

The novel, which is based on letters that Harry Wright wrote for his grandchild, is very creatively written. And the lessons are ones that are valuable to anyone. It was a fluke that I found this novel and that I read it. But for a nice, sweet, inspiring novel, I would highly recommend this.

Best Sedaris yet!

My entire "immediate' family gathered together - on vacation - in North Carolina right after Labor Day this year. We hadn't been all together for anything but sad and tragic events in over 9 years. It was great.

We were all posting photos on Facebook - of the scenery and of each other. One of my brother's friends recommended Calypso by David Sedaris in response to one of my brother's posts. This latest Sedaris collection of essays is about his North Carolina beach house - and his family. See the connection? We weren't at the beach, but we were in North Carolina - and we were with family.

As soon as I read this guy's comment, I looked up the book, added it to my TBR list... and ended up starting it a few days later. I think this is my favorite of all the Sedaris books I've read.

As much as this book is about family vacations in North Carolina, it's more about aging within the context of being part of a family. It's about loss. It's about watching parents age. I connected with this book on so many levels.

It started with this: ...thinking all the while about my ever-shrinking family. A person expects his parents to die. But a sibling? I felt I'd lost the identity I'd enjoyed since 1968, when my brother was born.

I caught my older daughter getting weepy several times on our North Carolina vacation. She was missing the four members of our family who were no longer with us. Within the past few years, we've lost my parents, my aunt, and a cousin who was more like a sister. My cousin helped me get through the first three losses, and my identity was so tied to hers. I was the little cousin and she was my idol. How many times after my cousin died did I say the exact words that Sedaris used, changing the word sibling to cousin? I expected to grow old with my darling cousin. Now, years later, I miss my parents, but they lived a good life. I expected to live to old age with my cousin. When her life ended, our life together was cut short.

He wrote this about diaries: "After I die, and you read something bad about yourself in my diary, do yourself a favor and keep reading," I often say to Hugh. "I promise that on the next page you'll find something flattering. Or maybe the page after that."

Just the day before, I'd had a discussion about just this with fellow bullet journalers. The question came up about whether or not to keep your bullet journal after you complete a notebook. My thought was, of course keep it! I treasured little things that I found from my parents after they died. I like to think that my kids or grandkids will find my bullet journals a treasure. One of the journalers in my group writes something at the front of each of her journals similar to what David spoke to Hugh. Perhaps I should do the same.

There were some political bits in the book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Then again, we think along the same lines. Enough said. Sad to think that our society is so politically divided right now that some people might not be able to make it through this entire book without throwing it against the wall in disgust. But based on that, I can not recommend this book unconditionally even though I gave it five stars on goodreads.

Tell Me How This Ends Well

The Jewish book club I'm trying to get rolling remains really small. At last month's meeting, there were only 3 of us - and a guest. (Thanks, Martha!) When it came time to pick a book for our next meeting in July, I was told by the other two members, who had already read David Samuel Levinson's Tell Me How This Ends Well, that we didn't have to read this book but that it had a really crazy ending. "Let's find another book to read." I hadn't read it yet.

An important premise of the novel is that Israel has been annihilated by three Arab neighbors and there is an influx of Israeli refugees living in the United States and in Europe. Antisemitism was on the rise. That's important, but that's not what the story was about.

The story revolves around the Jacobson family. The Jacobson mom has been given a poor health diagnosis. The three adult children decide that they should spend their mom's final Passover together at the home of the older brother in California. Jacob travels from German, Edith travels from Atlanta, and the parents travel from Texas. They kids plan to celebrate Passover with a family seder - which is part of a reality TV show - and then kill their abusive dad. Yes, you read that right! Kill their abusive dad.

(As an aside, the seder was on a Saturday night, the Saturday after Good Friday. I wonder why the author chose to have what seemed to be the first seder on a Saturday night. The way the Jewish calendar works, first seders never fall on Saturday nights.)

This book, in parts, is comical. The story is told from the perspective of all the children and then from the mom's perspective. In some parts it's dark humor. In other parts, it's laugh out loud funny.  It also gives us a dark vision of what might be in the future of American Jews. That part is frightening. It's hard to really categorize this novel - religious commentary, dysfunctional family, crime drama, and I wonder if that was the author's intention.

While the religious commentary was downright scary and the crime drama was where a good part of the humor came into play, what intrigued me was why the mom, Roz, stayed with the dad, Julian, for all those years if he was so abusive. First thought was that perhaps "in those days" it was difficult for a woman to consider getting a divorce. Then I realized that Roz was only 8 years older than I was, that she contemplated getting a divorced in 1996 - which is exactly when I was in the middle of getting a divorce! Would my family life have fallen apart the way the Jacobsons did had I stayed married? That gave me a lot to think about!

I read this novel while I was on vacation. I guess because it was lighter than what I normally read it might be considered a beach read! I decided that this book is chockablock full of things to discuss. I think it will make the perfect book for a Jewish book club, even though I don't think you have to be Jewish to enjoy it. Now to convince enough other people that this is a worthwhile read so that we can have a larger attendance at our next book club meeting.

Divorce is not for the faint-hearted

Rather than writing my random thoughts as part of my review of Every Other Weekend, I decided to put them in an entry of their own. I've pulled some passages of the book and then will share what the particular passage reminded me of from my own divorce. This is bound to be a very long blog entry, not really book-related. However, through my own writing, you'll have the opportunity to get to know me better.

In the driveway, note the brand-new Chevy van. On family trips, scuttle like a bug to get a swivel sweat. Yell "Shotgun," punch someone in the arm, cry to Mom if you have to - whatever it takes. If you're not swivelin', you're snivelin', 'cause the back seat reeks of sweat and swarms with ants when summer rolls around. They sneak up the tailpipe and find their way in, a little button of black squirm where someone spilt Hi-C from a can.

I don't think my memory here has anything to do with divorce. It has more to do with being a mother of three children, driving a minivan. We didn't have swivel seats in our middle row, but we did have captain's seats rather than a bench in our middle row. When I purchased my Toyota Previa in 1991, captain's seats were a big deal. Most minivans still had middle row benches. 

Once the kids were all out of their car safety seats (which happened a lot earlier in the 90s than it does today), it became a fight to sit "shotgun," in the front seat next to Mom. There'd be running for the car. The punching was also a thing. And I thought my family was unique. Ha!

The summer after my divorce, the kids and I were driving from our house in New Jersey to my parents' beach club in New York. On a good day, the drive took a little over an hour. If I'm recalling correctly, on this particular day, the traffic gods were on our side and we hadn't sat in any traffic at all. My youngest was sitting in the captain's seat on the passenger side of the middle row. I can't remember who was sitting next to her and who was sitting in the third row. About 5 minutes away from the beach club, I hear her say, "I have a stomach ache. I have to go to the bathroom." My response was, "Hold it in. We'll be there in a few minutes." She had a can of Yoo Hoo with her when we left our house. I had no idea how much she had or had not consumed. I then hear what sounds like her pouring the Yoo Hoo out of the can onto the floor of the car. That's what the other two kids heard as well. I'm not sure which one of us realized that she'd vomited all over herself, all over the seat.

Maybe this is a divorce story. My ex-husband wasn't helpful in nearly all ways, but until that point, he'd cleaned up a much larger share of the vomit that had come out of the mouths of our children. Someone else's vomit made me want to vomit. It made me feel like vomiting. Who was going to clean this up? Me, of course!

We get to the beach club, I get the kids up to my parents' cabana, and I did my share of whining about having to quickly get back down to the parking lot to clean up the vomit in the car before the temperature got too warm and the stench got too intense. Several of my mom's friends gathered together to get me supplied with rags, buckets, water, cleaning products. I left the kids with my mom and returned to the car.  I scrubbed, I rinsed, I disinfected. And that day, I left my car unlocked in the parking lot of the beach club with the door near what came to be known as "the vomit seat" wide open. 

Yes, "the vomit seat." Didn't the kids we carpooled around town ever wonder why none of my kids would seat in the middle passenger-side captain's seat? A year or so the Toyota was replaced with another minivan, this time a Plymouth, and "the vomit seat" was relegated to the memory books for me and all three kids.

And then Dad would show up, every other weekend and one night a week, looking like someone had blown him up and had left a weird, featureless man in his place. On Wednesdays, he'd take them to McDonald's and they'd eat in silence, and every other Friday he'd pick them up for the weekends at his house. They were long weekends, dull and quiet in a sad, sort of lonely way.

I can't really speak for my kids. I have lots of details about the time they spent with their father when they were kids. But the memory that this passage sparked has to do with how quickly the kids got thru their dinners out with their father on their Wednesday nights. Neither my former husband nor myself were fans of fast food. So he took the kids to actual sit-down restaurants. When I'd take the kids out to dinner, we'd enjoy our time together without me having to fret over cooking a meal that invariably someone wouldn't eat and when dinner was over, we'd get up from the table and go home. I didn't have to clean up and I didn't have to nag them for help. The four of us liked eating out together and it wasn't a rushed affair. Wednesday evenings, their father, who'd driven however long from somewhere in New York City to our house in suburban New Jersey, would be sitting in his car on the street, reading a newspaper until the kids were all home and ready to go out to dinner. They'd pull out of the driveway and seriously, maybe 25 minutes later, the kids would be ringing the bell. Dinner done. Really? He spent at least 4 times as long driving in the car as he did with the kids. Why?

Turns out, Dad does know his way here. Except that when he shows up now, he doesn't even come to the door. He just sits in the car, staring straight ahead, honking.

Again, our stories aren't even close. But they are certainly parallel. And this passage sparks two different and distinct memories. My kids and I remained in our family home after the divorce. So their dad knew his way to the house. (In the book, Nenny, her mother and her brothers move to an apartment with their mother's friend and then quickly moved into a house with their mother's new husband and his two kids.)

First memory. He's sitting in a car. I can't remember if this was in the early days when he still had his own car or later on, after his car had been stolen, and he'd show up in a different rental car each time. He'd be sitting in the car, head facing forward, with a newspaper pulled up right in front of his eyes, but positioned so that it blocked his view of the house or of me. Did he honk the horn? I can't remember for certain. But as soon as the first kid approached the car, he'd put down his newspaper, get out of the car and start screaming at the other two kids, "Let's get out of this dump." Remember, this was the house he and I bought together with the intention of raising our children there together. This happened for years. Whether it was picking up the kids for a weekend or picking them up for a "quick bite." "Quick bite," an expression he used all the time, being taken far too literally. "Let's get out to this dump." This happened all the time. I was the Girl Scout cookie mom. I had moms in the driveway picking up their cookie orders. And the father of my children is standing in the street yelling, "Let's get out of this dump." Another standing joke with the kids going forward.

Second memory. He might know the way to the house. But a while after his car got stolen, he claimed that he wasn't able to secure a rental car for Sunday evenings in order to drive the kids home. He'd send them home with a "car and driver." Eventually, a "car and driver" often showed up on Fridays for the pick-ups. Anyway, the current memory is about the time that the driver was unable to read the handwritten directions that my ex-husband had given him to be able to get them home. This was in the mid-90s, years before GPS was a thing for ordinary drivers. Of course the driver didn't realize he couldn't read the handwritten directions until he and the kids were crossing the George Washington Bridge. As soon as my middle child realized that they were "lost," she started to cry. Eventually, two or three of them were able to somehow, miraculously, direct the driver back to our house. After that, whenever we'd drive from New York City to our house, I'd throw out the question, "Okay, which way to I head now?" making sure that they'd recognize landmarks and would be comfortable finding their way home.

Little Nenny has always been a nervous nelly. She was born with a natural predilection for alarm. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. This simple irrationality governs her whole life - top to bottom, inside and out.

This describes my youngest. She had broken her leg as a toddler and as such, required much more personal space than most kids need. She was afraid of people getting physically too close. She was afraid of being alone at night. She'd "sleepwalk" down the stairs and lie down on the kitchen floor outside my office, without me even knowing she'd come downstairs. That led to me having all three kids sleep in the same bedroom for probably close to a year. It took many more years for her to be able to sleep in her own bedroom, alone. She was afraid of storms. She was afraid of getting lost. She was afraid of animals. (In the midst of writing up this post, she reminded me that she was afraid of our cat as a child. Our cat. That lived in our house with us.) Once when we had a chipmunk loose in our house, she locked herself in her bedroom for about 15 hours with a towel blocking the bottom of the door. Didn't she have to go to the bathroom? She was afraid of terrorists. But more on that later.

Having divorced parents is like living in one of those claw machines at the pizza parlor: you're just hanging around, minding your own business, and then every other weekend you get plucked up and flung somewhere else. Except it's less fun than the pizza place. It's not like Nenny ever thinks Yippee, a weekend at Dad's.

"Just everyone sit down," Dad finally says, and they sit at the picnic table. He irritably hands out the food and they start to eat. Denny's burger is smeared with ketchup and she practically gags, but she knows better than to complain.

Oh boy! My oldest hated ketchup. I wish he'd known better, most of the time, than to complain. The tears.

Even though Mom's pissed, she lets Nenny come along and softens halfway through the drive. She's like that: prone to rage and then settle guilt for exposing the kids to her wrath.

Isn't this a normal mom thing? Or is it exclusive to divorced moms? Didn't we have a certain level of guilt to overcome, just because we were divorced?

"You ever been to a laundromat before?" she asks. 
"I don't think so," Nenny says.
...
Mom smiles. "Boy, are you spoiled!" She looks at Nenny playfully, but Nenny just looks back. She sure doesn't feel spoiled. Spoiled is a new Barbie every week and trips to the skating rink.

At the end of October a new quiet descends upon the house like nothing Nenny's heard before. Though she doesn't know it yet, it's the silent assault of approaching death. Gramma B's been declining for months. That's what they say, "a steady decline," as though she's slowly crawling down a hill.

The memory associated with this is not good. This was in 2004. Both my ex-husband and I were in relationships. He was engaged to be married. For what seemed like a really long period of time, whenever my ex-husband needed an excuse for not showing up for something or not being able to spend time with the kids, he'd bring his future wife's sick mother into play. One Friday he called to say that he couldn't pick up the kids until Saturday because his girlfriend's mother was really, really sick, on death's doorstep, and he promised his girlfriend that he'd spend the evening with the two of them. I had plans for the weekend that involved leaving town. I stuck around longer and made overnight plans for the kids. Death's doorstep? The father of my significant other had recently passed away. I understood death's doorstep. 

On Sunday, once the kids were home, I learned that my ex-husband's future wife's elderly but not too sick mother wanted to go out to dinner. She wasn't on death's doorstep at all. She was old. She wanted a restaurant meal. I was hurt by the insensitivity of him using a death's doorstep excuse. And hey, could he have not lied? Oh wait. I guess not.

"Get under your desks!" Sister Timothy shouts and peers through the blinds. "Oh no, it's the Russians! Dear God, dear God, dear God!" She crosses herself like crossing's the only thing left.
...
Mikhail Gorbachev comes into the room. The Mikhail Gorbachev.

What's my recollection here?  My youngest was a fifth grader on September 11, 2001. Like Nenny, she was a fearful child. I wish I could remember if she was afraid of Saddam Hussein in the days before 9/11 or the days after. Not only was she afraid of Saddam Hussein, she was sure that he was a regular at our Starbucks! She insisted she'd see him there. I later learned that the guy she identified as Saddam Hussein was an artist who spent an awful lot of time at our Starbucks. He looked nothing like Saddam Hussein. And she could never really explain to me why she thought that's who this fellow really was. We (everyone but my youngest) joked around about it. But she was totally serious. 

Denny's on the Baby-Sitters Club #5 again, Dawn and the Impossible Three, because she forgot the newest one at Dad's. That's another thing about divorce: you pack things and forget things and lose things all the time. There's a trail of your stuff like crumbs wherever you go.

I don't remember too much of that going on with my kids and their dad's house. Mostly because they brought everything back and forth each time they went for the weekend. I found out after they'd spent many weekends there that he didn't have tooth paste or shampoo for them. He expected them to bring those things along with them. As if it was a hotel. Yet, he insisted that his apartment in New York was their "real home."

But she doesn't get up right away. She clutches her book and hugs her knees and sits for a minute on the midway stairs. She knows what it's like to anticipate something, then to have your hope shrivel like a deflating balloon. Every time she goes to Dad's she expects something will have changed, that maybe this time he'll ask how she is, if she's happy, if anything's wrong, but he never does. He's so whacked and floating in his own world of grades and naps and dumb historical facts. The house could be on fire and he'd just sit there, with his cup of coffee and his stack of papers and his pile of red pens.

Then again, he'd always show up. He's never not shown up. That's a different kind of disappointment entirely.

I believe this describes my children's situation. He always showed up when he said he'd show up. That doesn't mean he didn't back out of weekends or dinners with advanced warning. He did that all the time. But we always knew in advance.

As kids, I know all three of them wished that something would change. That somehow the dad that picked them up would be a warmer, "daddier" like dad than the one they really had.  And that was the source of their biggest disappointment. They're adults, and I'm not 100% sure that the disappointment each time they see him isn't totally gone.

Every year the fourth graders at school research a California mission and build a model out of sticks or sugar cubes, and every year it's always the same - tiny Indians in the mission gardens, raking soil or planting seeds or forming bricks, or else praying with some priest in a courtyard somewhere, the feeling one of peaceful camaraderie, of a fair and equitable exchange, and every year, walking through the cafeteria where the models are on display, Nenny thinks, Yeah, right. Everyone knows the Indians were slaves.

Next year, she thinks, when I'm in fourth grade, my model's gonna tell the truth, and pictures sugar cubes specked with painted blood and little figure faces twisted with rage.

Mexican houses! That was the project that my kids had to do in first grade. The dreaded Mexican house project. I was still married when my oldest was in first grade. His father and I had just returned from a quick getaway to Cancun where I'd seen actual Mexican houses. I guided him in his construction of his house. I had him do all the work. I don't think they got actual grades on their Mexican houses, but had they, he would have gotten a D-. His teacher told me that his house didn't look at all like how she'd described the houses to the children. So was THAT the project? That was never made clear. Not to the first graders and not to their parents. His house looked just like what I'd just seen in Mexico! Not to mention that he was "sloppily" done. Well, yes! He was 6 years old and I wasn't doing the project for him. His Mexican house fell apart on the day that he carried it home from school. I don't think I realized how many parents did the projects for the kids so those kids showed up with very well-constructed Mexican houses!

Take two. My middle child is assigned the Mexican house project. I knew better this time. "What did Mrs. Hayes say that your Mexican house needs to look like?" I didn't talk about any real Mexican houses I'd seen before or how her older brother's Mexican house was not well-received. She described the house that her teacher had described to her. And that's how her house was constructed. By her. That's when I learned that many of those over-achieving parents built the houses that their children brought in. You should have seen the house the child of the architect brought in! Well, you can imagine!

Take three. My youngest makes it to first grade. She has the same first grade teacher as her older siblings. The entire summer between kindergarten and first grade, I'm dreading the stupid Mexican house project. The school year rolls along and my dread grows. But no mention of the Mexican house. Ever. June comes. First grade is over. No Mexican house. Hooray! It wasn't until about 3 years later when I'd begun my full-time teaching career that I learned why their was no Mexican house project. Apparently the year that my youngest was in first grade, there was a new, young first grade teacher at their school. She thought the Mexican house project was ridiculous. And she made it go away. I owe great thanks to that wonderful teacher who impacted the lives of both my child and me, for the better, without us really ever having any direct contact with her.

That's the extent of my text-to-self connections from Every Other Weekend by Zulema Renee Summerfield. I have tons more anecdotes. Maybe someday I'll write a book.

Brooklyn on my mind

I restarted Les Miserables and I wasn't going to pick up another book until I was finished. Until... Halsey Street by Naima Coster showed up in the December Amazon First Reads selection. I wondered, did Halsey Street refer to the street in Brooklyn? I quickly went to read the description.

"A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.

Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy."

Brooklyn is in the front of my mind lately as I prepare to sell my family home. The home that has been in my family since sometime in 1935. Just from the description, I was drawn in by connections to my own personal life. I (temporarily) moved back to Brooklyn when my father became ill. And the Brooklyn I returned to was not the Brooklyn that I'd left over 35 years ago. (And maybe it's not everyone... but do most people not get the future that they've dreamed of?)

I immediately downloaded the book, scrapped reading Les Miz for the second time and started reading Halsey Street.

I've never actually been on Halsey Street although for some reason that name is etched in my mind. Did I ever know anyone that lived on Halsey Street? I'm not really sure. It's in a neighborhood that I wouldn't have dared visiting alone as a kid growing up in Brooklyn (although I do think a friend's mother took me to that neighborhood more than once or twice). Now, it's just another neighborhood where the folks who have been living there a long time are being priced out of and forced to move. Just like many other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and other urban centers. Adult children of my friends are living there. Most likely, I couldn't afford to live there. So there!

That's a part of the story of Halsey Street.

There's lots of darkness and very little light in the debut novel. My initially reaction was to give it three stars on goodreads.com because of how dark it can tend to be. (It became a little bit difficult to read at some of those points.) I wondered if anyone I knew would enjoy this book. But is that a reason for me to give a book 3 stars when in my gut I felt it deserved 4? I went in and changed my rating this morning.

Rather than give you a straight out review, I'm going to comment on some of the lines in the book that really spoke to me.

The houses where I grew up in California are hardly ever this beautiful. The designs are so garish and cold. But there's so much history in these brownstones. It must have been a magical place to grow up.

My family house which was built in 1910 has so many interesting features. They sure don't build houses like that anymore. I'm sure the people who are buying our house are going to make major changes. Will they destroy the character? They can't touch the history, can they? And about that history. We're not talking about just my history, but my grandparents' history, moving there as young parents. The history of my mom and her sister, growing up in that house. My parents' history. Taking over the house as newlyweds and then inheriting the house when my grandmother died. The childhood history of my brother and me. Was he as anxious to leave Brooklyn as I was? And of course the history of my kids, most especially my son who lived in the house as an adult  for over 2 years.

Was it a magical place to grow up? I know that Penelope doesn't believe Bed-Stuy was magical when she grew up. It's only now as an adult that I can see some of the magic in my upbringing. I compare it to where I raised my children, in suburban New Jersey. But I think about how my upbringing, if more magical, was only more magical because of the time period when I grew up and not because of the location.

Penelope gathered her new set of keys from the floor and left to see her father. The house was just a few blocks over, and Penelope wanted to see if the other streets were as quaint as Greene and Bedford. Ralph had narrated the changes in the neighborhood to her over the phone, five years' worth of losses. His store wasn't the only one that had closed. Lionel Sheckley wasn't the only friend who had died. Almost everyone was gone, he said. He hardly recognized Bed-Stuy.

 

Each time I return to Brooklyn, I need to go for a walk in the neighborhood. I carefully study which streets seem well-kempt, which don't. (I seriously think the homeowners on our block in Midwood took a pact to not upgrade the outsides of their houses. Compared to other streets where bricks have been repointed, vinyl siding has been replaced with some other face. Gardens are not just well-tended but beautifully appointed.

I try to remember what's been changed. On my last visit "home" I was struck by what the schoolyard at the end of my block looked like. It looks like a park. I spent so many years playing on the concrete and dry dirt in the schoolyard. We used it as a park, although it was never park-like! I also walked around the block to examine the construction of new homes taking place behind us. Is that what is going to happen to our house?

And what about the neighbors? I'm fortunate to have many of my old neighbors as friends on Facebook. We're getting reacquainted as adults but take time to remember the "magical" place where we grew up. I'm hard pressed to think of any of my neighborhood friends from growing up that still live in the neighborhood. Or even Brooklyn. Or even NYC. By the time my parents died in 2014, almost everyone they had been friendly with had died. I guess that's a common story.

And she'd thought herself fortunate, compared to her classmates in Bed-Stuy; for the first time, at RISD, Penelope wondered whether she had been poor. She quickly realized she hadn't been, although her mother had, and her father, when they were children.

My experience wasn't quite as extreme as Penelope's. Growing up, I thought we might be rich. We traveled to Miami regularly, took a road trip most summers, and from time to time we'd go somewhere like the Bahamas and California and stay in a hotel. We belonged to a beach club. That's more than many of my classmates did. It wasn't until I got to college and met some real rich people that I realized we fell somewhere in the middle class. My parents' upbringings had been very different from my own. In some ways richer, in many ways more deprived.

They found a table by the window in a cafe on Nostrand Avenue. It was a new restaurant with yellow curtains...

Cafe? Nostrand Avenue? That doesn't really compute. I'm constantly surprised by what previously unimagined businesses have cropped up on what street. In my Brooklyn. In the parts of Brooklyn I didn't dare go to as a teen.

"Revitalization. They're revitalizing the neighborhood." He made big swoops with his fingers, quotation marks around the word revitalize.

"It's still Brooklyn, Pop."

"Maybe on the surface. But what about inside, hmm?" Ralph gestured over his shoulder at the rest of the restaurant. Most of the other customers were talking over their lunches, nearly all of them white. They weren't the majority outside on Nostrand but they were in here, congregated around the little tables.

That's Brooklyn!

Penelope felt a charge in her fingertips, her cheeks. "Is that what you see?"

"Penelope, I get it, people have all kinds of romantic attachments to where they grew up, but that's life in this city. You lose everything you love here."

"What have you lost? What has Marcus?"

"At least, the three of us in this room can all benefit from the changes-"

But can everyone benefit from the changes? My neighborhood has changed. I don't remember how long it's been since we haven't fit in. Is there hope, possibilities, for us there? There are now two Starbucks within walking distance, but on the outskirts. It's still not a Starbucks kind of neighborhood. That sounds so shallow. I don't mean it to. We need to keep reminding us that the Brooklyn that we're finally "leaving" isn't the Brooklyn where we grew up. That brings up another internal conflict for another day.

She felt sad not that she had lost something but rather that her mother had - Ramona had loved her life, her pipe and her blue casita and her mountain. Mirella was sorry the old woman wouldn't live any more of the days she had loved so much. She was sorry for Penelope, too, afraid she would be unable to stop crying, the way Mirella had been after her father died. She had cried every day for a year, and then only once in a while, abruptly and for no reason at all, at times that seemed to have nothing to do with her father. And then Mirella learned to put away her sadness, to store it in her body, somewhere out of the way, higher than her stomach, below her throat.

This spoke to me simply because I'm selling the house because my parents have died. In some ways the sale of the house is more difficult than the death of my parents. It's just so much more FINAL. As we age, we kind of assume that our parents will die before we do. That's the natural order. But when you've had a family home, you never stop to consider that once both your parents are gone, the family home will most likely be gone, too. Especially if it's in a changed neighborhood. A neighborhood where you no longer feel you have a place.

If you've stuck with me so far, this last quote is very meaningful to me. It made me smile and get teary-eyed, both at the same time. The final line I'm going to share with you is reminiscent of what my mother said to me nearly every single day when I spoke to her on the phone.

Ralph laughed when Penelope called, asked her about Pittsburgh, and promised her he was "fine, just fine."

That was my mother's exact line. Exactly. Parents lie.

Thank you for reading to the end of this very long post. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post telling you that I felt like writing rather than reading. Reading this book has allowed me to do a little bit of the writing I've been itching to do. Just a little bit. And I was reading at the same time.

Now... back to Les Miserables. I think.

Let's talk about A Spool of Blue Thread

Just as I suspected, while A Spool of Blue Thread was just an okay book, the book club discussion was so much better. It was a great book to discuss.

A dozen members of my community book club met to chat about Anne Tyler’s latest novel, “A Spool of Blue Thread”.  Anne Tyler is famous for writing about family relationships. Over time, “the essential concern for family remains the same.” The facilitator of the discussion came prepared with lots of background information about Tyler. In addition to talking about the book, many aspects of the author’s life were discussed as well. One member of our group is a huge fan of Tyler’s and has read all twenty of her novels at least once. I think I've only read 3 or 4. Or maybe 5. After our discussion, I might want to check if I've read "The Accidental Tourist" or not. That sounds like a book I might enjoy, if I haven't enjoyed it already.

“A Spool of Blue Thread” is the story about a house. It’s also about the Whitshank family living in the house. The house was very much a character of the novel. And the story of how the house came to the family was quite compelling. One of the reviews shared said that Tyler’s characters are frequently described as “sweet, sentimental and cozy.” The book club disagreed with this account. They felt that most of Tyler’s characters are quirky and unpredictable. The quirkiness of the characters was a big appeal to many in the group. 

No one in attendance at the meeting disliked the book although some felt it was one of Tyler’s weakest books. Whether we loved the book or felt it was mediocre, there was so much to talk about. Big families have lots of drama. They also have interesting stories. The way the elder Whitshanks came to get married. The way the second generation Whitshanks came to get married. The way that Abby Whitshank picked up strays wherever she went, unless it was to the beach on family vacations. The way the Whitshank family considered themselves “special.” What does it mean to consider yourself part of a “special” family? That debate could have gone on for a good long time. One woman hated the word special. Another woman and I felt that being special wasn't always a good thing... but that's what made our family our own.

Aging was a theme of the novel. Some wondered aloud whether Anne Tyler’s own aging contributed to some parts of the story not quite jiving. There were some missing threads (pun intended). There were some stories that didn't quite seem necessary. Many felt that the ending seemed rushed. It also gave ample opportunities for the group to discuss related experiences. After the death of Abby, Red is very willing to move out of the house. How realistic is that? Why and how would he realize that staying in the beloved family home was no longer the correct choice? How does an older person know when it’s time to give up a house? We also talked about Denny being the prodigal son and about the roles that each of the adult children had within the family. Abby always wanted her children to be friends for life. Is that what we want for our children? I'm happy to report that my three adult children are very close and while I don't take credit for that, it makes me very happy and proud. What expectations do have parents have for their children as adults? What do we want most for our children?

“A Spool of Blue Thread” might or might not be Tyler’s final book. Rumor had it that she was never going to finish this one. But she did. And while there are no plans to publish a next work, she’s still writing.