Showing posts with label mothers and daughters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers and daughters. Show all posts
Jun 6, 2019
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Nov 10, 2018
Jul 3, 2018
May 21, 2018
Apr 1, 2018
Jan 11, 2018
Jul 4, 2017
Jan 1, 2016
This is your life, Harriet Chance! - Jonathan Evison
Booklist Reviews
With a tip of the hat to the 1950s game show This Is Your Life, Evison's droll portrait of 78-year-old Harriet Chance homes in on key incidents in the widow's life. As Harriet sets off on an Alaskan cruise, she is visited by the ghost of her dead husband, Bernard (their conversations are a comedic highlight), who held some dark secrets that, once revealed, inspire Harriet to seriously reevaluate her life. It turns out that she has some secrets of her own, which seriously impacted her relationship with her children, especially her deeply depressed daughter, who is still struggling with addiction and who unexpectedly shows up on the boat midway through the cruise. Whether describing Harriet's epic battle with a crab-leg dinner after imbibing too much wine or her tentative attempts to reach rapprochement with her daughter, Evison always depicts her with a great deal of compassion and a keen eye for the humorous detail. Both uplifting and melancholy, funny and thought-provoking, this entertaining read speaks directly to the importance of acceptance and healing. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Dec 4, 2015
Swamplandia! - Karen Russell
Summary: This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen-year-old, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Russell's lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006). Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings, and Swamplandia! itself is endangered as audiences dwindle. The Chief leaves. Brother Kiwi, 17, sneaks off to work at the World of Darkness, a new mainland amusement park featuring the "rings of hell." Otherworldly sister Osceola, 16, vanishes after falling in love with the ghost of a young man who died while working for the ill-fated Dredge and Fill Campaign in the 1930s. It's up to Ava, 13, to find her sister, and her odyssey to the Underworld is mythic, spellbinding, and terrifying. Russell's powers reside in her profound knowledge of the great imperiled swamp, from its alligators and insects, floating orchids and invasive "strangler" melaleuca trees to the tragic history of its massacred indigenous people and wildlife. Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
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Jun 1, 2015
Where'd you go Bernadette - Maria Semple
Summary: When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Bernadette Fox, practically a shut-in, who's hired a virtual assistant in India to remotely arrange every task, from hiring a gardener to planning the trip to Antarctica she's promised her star-student daughter, Bee seems pretty crazy. But don't be fooled. Suspicions that madcap Bernadette is as clever as her last name implies will be confirmed heartily. When she's party to some unfortunate events, her erratic behavior leads her husband, Microsoft guru Elgin Branch, to commit her to a local mental-health facility. But Bernadette intercepts his plan at the pass, escapes the staged intervention, and disappears without a trace. Though much of the story is told through documents—e-mails, letters, magazine articles—precocious young teen Bee as narrator is great company, entertaining and convincing in her comportment. TV writer Semple (Arrested Development) pokes fun at the Pacific Northwest as only a Seattlelite can and concocts a caper that, if seen from outer space, might be a mess but in the minutiae of its tangles is clear and rewarding. Under the guise of a hilarious romp, Semple explores the universal questions of why we do what we do and love what we love to some sweet and unexpected ends. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2015
Reconstructing Amelia - Kimberly McCreight
Summary: Kate is in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter now. But Kate's stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it's already too late for Amelia. And for Kate. An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that is the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn't jump. The novel is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it's the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn't save.
Booklist Reviews
Kate believes her daughter, 15-year-old Amelia, has committed suicide, jumping from the roof of her private school—until she receives an anonymous text saying simply, "Amelia didn't jump." Could she have been murdered? Kate, a successful attorney, is determined to find out even as she is haunted by the fear she has failed her daughter, too often putting her career ahead of her responsibilities as a mother. McCreight has written an elaborately plotted mystery that not only tells Kate's story but also includes Amelia's own first-person narrative along with her e-mails, texts, and Facebook posts, all of which tell a harrowing story while keeping the reader one step ahead of Kate and the police. This first novel occasionally requires a willing suspension of disbelief and comes dangerously close to melodrama near the end, but McCreight does a fine job of building suspense and creating characters, notably Kate and Amelia, whom the target audience—both adults and older teens—will care about and empathize with. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Feb 4, 2015
Leaving time - Jodi Picoult
Summary: "Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife, and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it's been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment . . . or worse. Still Jenna--now thirteen years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief--steadfastly refuses to believe in her mother's desertion. So she decides to approach the two people who might still be able to help her find Alice: a disgraced psychic named Serenity Jones, and Virgil Stanhope, the cynical detective who first investigated her mother's disappearance and the death of one of her mother's co-workers. Together these three lonely souls will discover truths destined to forever change their lives. Deeply moving and suspenseful, Leaving Time is a radiant exploration of the enduring love between mothers and daughters"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
On the night one of the caretakers at a New Hampshire elephant sanctuary was killed, Jenna's mother, Alice, was found unconscious nearby. Hours later, Alice checked herself out of the hospital and disappeared, leaving her 3-year-old daughter behind. Now, 10 years later, the precocious 13-year-old wants answers to the mysteries of her mother's whereabouts. Is she dead? Was she also the victim of an unknown assailant? Or was she an abused wife and heartless mother who did not care about her child's welfare? With her father, Thomas, incarcerated in a mental hospital since the tragedy that destroyed his family, Jenna has few people to turn to for help. Aided only by Virgil, the disgraced detective who bungled the initial investigation, and Serenity, a once-famous but now infamous TV psychic, Jenna seeks answers to the questions that have always plagued her. Best-selling, reliably entertaining, and thought-provoking Picoult's newest multifaceted novel is redolent with elephant lore that explores the animals' behavior when faced with death and grief, and combines a poignant tale of human loss with a perplexing crime story that delivers a powerhouse ending.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Popular Picoult's latest hot-topic novel will be heavily promoted on all fronts as she appears in 20 cities and conducts a TV satellite tour. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2014
In a country of mothers - A. M. Homes
Summary: Jody Goodman, an aspiring filmmaker, and Claire Roth, a middle-aged counselor of troubled souls, develop a friendship that allows each to escape her prescribed role - (Baker & Taylor)
Publishers Weekly Reviews
In two previous books, Homes ( The Safety of Objects ) has written about people caught in the midst of change and unable (or unwilling), at first, to control or understand it. Naturally, one of her best subjects is adolescence; Jack , her first novel, tells of a boy coming to terms with his estranged father's newfound homosexuality. Here, Homes enlarges her scope with exhilarating assurance, paying equal attention to people young and mature as they pass from what they once were to whoever they must finally be. The novel concerns Jody, a frail but driven young woman pursuing a film career, and Claire, a successful, middle-aged psychiatrist who, many years ago, gave up a child born out of wedlock to foster parents. The third-person narrative shifts between the two women as Jody becomes Claire's intermittent patient and steady obsession, and the doctor, though happily married with a family of her own, becomes convinced that Jody is her long-lost child. But for Homes, this plot twist, despite its considerable suspense, serves mainly as a useful route for exploring the flux, passion and perversity of binding love. She does this with wit, skillful pacing and a sympathy for characters and their dislocations that borders--agreeably--on the uncritical. (May) Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information.
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