Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald is a larger than life story, a convoluted tale of family secrets and lies. At least three times in the novel the action occurs in clumps, and over the course of a few days or even a single night, there is more family melodrama than all of Shakespeare’s … Continue reading Fall On Your Knees, a book review
Written with my Thursday night writing group (now meeting on Zoom!) with the prompts: one red shoe and oh, dear. Madelaine wore one red shoe and one green shoe because it was Christmas and she was in a wild holiday mood. She wondered, do cats see color?—because it was only the cats who would see … Continue reading How Madelaine Survives Quarantine
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was dipping into Sleeping on the Wing by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, an anthology of poetry and writing prompts written for children and teens. In a chapter on D.H. Lawrence, the authors note that Lawrence called his poems “acts of attention.” They prompt readers to give … Continue reading The Story of My Hydrangea Bush
This has been a very upsetting couple of weeks, but if you’re paying attention you already know that. Because of the continuing pandemic, I choose to be mostly homebound, writing, reading, zooming, watching fun stuff on TV like Star Trek and Christopher Guest mockumentaries. But this week I could barely tear myself away from CNN, … Continue reading Black Lives Matter
Greetings! If you’re a regular reader, you know the past two weeks I’ve suggested some prayers that I’ve found helpful, and I continue to encourage everyone to write prayers and affirmations too. It’s funny, because almost as soon as the first post went up, I began to feel kind of down. And so I felt … Continue reading Continued Sheltering, part three
The Amazon tagline describes this novel by Ann Patchett as the story of a family that goes from poverty to riches to poverty and back to riches again. Well, yeah, but that hardly prepares us for the plot of this book. More than a few reviewers call it a fairy tale. I just didn’t see … Continue reading The Dutch House, a review
When I was 21 I went to Europe on a five-week student tour with my best friends. On our last day we were in England, and we went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. I have several memories of that day, a few funny stories, conversations, photos, but there was one image … Continue reading Sheltering-in-Place
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is a well-written, topical book, an engrossing read, and the basis for a brand-new series starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon on Hulu. I want to tell you what I think about it, but let’s face it, I’m sure you can go online or pick up a TV guide … Continue reading Little Fires Everywhere, a consideration of race and class in America
Alice Hoffman’s “The World That We Knew” is an achingly beautiful fairy tale about the Holocaust. Her novel emphasizes the plight of children separated from their parents: Jewish children and the offspring of Resistance Fighters hiding with false ID’s in convent schools; others roaming by themselves or in small groups in the forest, foraging for … Continue reading The World That We Knew, a review
I can’t remember the number of times I’ve read Little Women. I’m pretty sure I read it at least twice when I was a kid, but perhaps it was three times or more. I read it again in my late 20s/early 30s when the book group I’d formed with friends decided to read it—or I … Continue reading Little Women, a consideration
