The Mistress's Daughter: A Memoir

By A. M. Homes

Novelist A.M. Homes lived the first thirty-one years of her life with the knowledge that she was adopted. Though many of the details remained sketchy, one fact that she did know for sure was that her birth parents were not married to each other; her birth father was married to another woman and having an affair with A.M.’s birth mother, making A.M. the mistress’s daughter.
When she finds out that her birth mother is looking for her, A.M. feels an incredible range of emotions. She has always dreamt that her birth parents would be wonderful, loving, smart, and attractive, and that their reunion would finally give her the sense of identity and belonging that she had always missed. However, the real life reunion turns out to be much more complicated and her birth parents are not at all what she expected or hoped for. Ellen is a sad, sickly, extremely needy woman who acts like A.M. is still a young child while Norman is cold, distant and arrogant, treating her more like a secret mistress than a daughter. A.M. writes about her experience as an adoptee balancing two families while searching for her own identity with both style and raw emotion.
The second part of the book, titled Book Two, abruptly changes gears to focus on the author’s genealogical search for her family history and then devotes 15 pages to questions she imagines asking Norman in a courtroom or a deposition, like on Law and Order. Since she never reveals the answers to any of these questions or the outcome of the possible legal dispute, it feels kind of pointless to the reader.
So, I really have to give this book a mixed review: a thumbs up to the first half and a thumbs down to the second part.

The Late Bloomer's Revolution: A Memoir

By Amy Cohen

Life is not turning out the way New Yorker Amy Cohen expected. She never imagined that she’d be single, childless and motherless at thirty-five years old. Fortunately, Amy is not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Instead, she is clinging to the hope that she is just a late bloomer in life and she sets out to make her life better. She learns to cook. She overcomes her fear of riding a bicycle (which I can totally relate to). She continues her search for a soul mate despite many bad dates and failed relationships. Cohen’s misadventures are easy to relate to and alternate between touching and sad to light and humorous. Her observations on life and love are dead on. Many times I’d be reading along and find myself thinking “I’m just like that!” or “That is so true!”

For example, her thoughts on casual sex:
“…I knew casual sex wasn’t for me. It never had been. I got hurt if someone didn’t call if we’d just kissed. When things didn’t work out with someone I liked, the only comfort was in saying, ‘At least we didn’t have sex.’ People accused me of having high moral values, but the truth was I had a low threshold for pain.”

On one of her exes:
“And while he felt trapped, I felt that I was too much, that the events of my life were more than he could handle, and so I decided not to need anything. I felt as if I started out as an origami bird, one of those simple swans, but I just kept folding myself smaller and smaller, until I was this unrecognizable crumpled wad of paper. But as hard as I tried to make myself tiny, it was still too much for Josh…”

And finally on self acceptance:
“…I’d started to feel that even though I’d lost my ice climber, I was now scaling the snowy mountain myself…In the same way that I never would have imagined that at 35, I’d learn to ride a bike, or that I’d ever be able to roast a chicken, or not completely fall apart after the devastating end to my only engagement, now I knew that anything was possible. I knew this in a way I never had. So much in fact, that I could now answer the question ‘Do you think you’ll be okay?’ with a confident ‘I do.’

I think many women will find pieces of themselves in this well written, hopeful memoir.

Looking Forward to Fall 2007

Some of my favorite writers have new books coming out soon!

September:

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

October:

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Run by Ann Patchett










January:

The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller

Although this one is not book related, I have to mention Magic, the new album by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band coming out on October 2!!

Free Food for Millionaires: A Novel

by Min Jin Lee

At first glance, Casey Han would seem to have it all: an Ivy League education, a great boyfriend, a nice, close-knit family. But Casey's world is about to unravel. Just days after graduating from Princeton where she lived among its wealthy and priviledged student body, Casey is back living with her parents in their tiny Queens apartment. Her parents are religious and hardworking, with very traditional Korean beliefs, tirelessly running a busy dry cleaning business to support their family. They do not know about Casey's American boyfriend Jay and favor the more quiet and agreeable demeanor of her younger sister. One night at dinner, Casey and her father have a horrible fight about her future plans; he wants her to attend law school at Columbia but she wants to defer for a year. When Casey cannot apologize to her father and agree to his wishes, she is hit and thrown out of the house. She turns to Jay for help but finds him in a compromising position with two sorority girls. Heartbroken, alone and completely broke, Casey seems to have hit rock bottom. However, Casey does have two things that many people in that situation might not have: a "fairy godmother" of sorts named Sabine and the beginning of a friendship with her classmate Ella. Free Food for Millionaires is the story of how Casey turns her life around despite problems of race, class and romance. At over 550 pages, this is a pretty heavy book to carry around but I found myself wishing that it was even longer so I could read more about Casey and the lives of her friends and family. Well written with interesting observations about life and flawed yet realistic characters, this is a great coming of age story.

Forgive Me

by Amanda Eyre Ward

Nadine Morgan is one of the most unlikeable protagonists ever. She is stubborn, driven, selfish and fiercely independent. Few writers could succeed in making her sympathetic to readers. Luckilly, Ward is one writer with the ability to create complex and realistic characters with both good and bad qualities. Nadine may be all of those adjectives listed above, but she is also strong, intelligent, and fearless. This novel centers on Nadine, a 35 year old journalist who left a normal life on idyllic Cape Cod to travel the globe, writing about the injustices and atrocities she witnesses. Nadine's assignments take her to the places most of us would never go because they scare us. Places like South Africa, where she lost the love of her life, and Mexico City, where she is attacked by a group of men and left in a ditch to die.

After the beating, Nadine returns to the quiet of the Cape to recover, but soon she is yearning for the next big story like a drug addict in search of her next fix. She is desperate to escape her hometown, where her memories are filled with loss and sadness. Nadine's attractive doctor convinces her to rest at his Nantucket home for a few days and just as they are becoming more than friends, she leaves unexpectedly. Nadine has been chasing a story back in South Africa about an American student named Jason Irving who was murdered during the height of the apartheid era a few years ago. Now his killers are seeking amnesty and his parents are torn between closure and revenge. Nadine also finds herself torn between continuing her dangerous lifestyle and giving it all up for something more. A compelling and clever story about the power of forgiving others and also in forgiving yourself. Also recommend Ward's previous book How to Be Lost.

Dedication: A Novel

by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

What if your high school boyfriend grew up to be a famous rock star?

What if his most famous song was written all about YOU?

Back in the 1980's and junior high, Katie Hollis loved classmate Jake Sharpe from afar. During high school, her crush turned into much more when she and Jake began dating and later fell in love. Althoug he could be sensitive and adorable at times, Jake wasn't always the best boyfriend and everything fell apart when Katie went away to college and Jake went to LA to start his music career.

Fast forward to thirteen years later. Katie is thirty and she goes by the name Kate now. She has a successful career and life in Charleston. Jake, now famous for his music and engaged to a glamorous actress, has never returned to his hometown in suburban Maine. His most famous songs are all about Kate, their sex life and her mother's infidelity, and have left her feeling exploited and embarrassed, not to mention heartbroken, all these years. When Kate hears that Jake is coming home for Christmas, she races there as well, hoping for closure and revenge on the guy who broke her heart. However, she is not prepared for their attraction to be so intense after all these years and when Jake breaks up with his fiance, Kate must make some hard decisions about what is forgivable and what kind of life she wantes to lead.

An entertaining premise and a decent story about getting over the past and on with your life.

Tabloid Love

Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places: A Memoir

by Bridget Harrison

Bridget Harrison is a 29 year old British newspaper reporter with a great boyfriend, a nice house and plenty of friends. She also has a yearning for adventure, so when she is offered a temporary position at the New York Post through a work exchange program, she leaps at the chance to live in the US, even though it means leaving all the great things about her life behind in London. Readers follow Bridget as she suddenly finds herself single and alone in a new city. Soon she is learning the ropes of her new job and settling into life in Manhattan. She even starts dating again and accepts a permanent postion at the paper, eventually writing her own column about dating in New York and falling head over heels in love with her boss.

Bridget is likeable and down to earth, her problems are very easy to relate to. Fans of Sex and the City will enjoy reading about her exciting Carrie Bradshaw-ish adventures with dating. This book does drag a bit in spots but all in all, it is a fun, light read.