The Handmaid's Tale

I had high hopes for this book. I really did. I kept reading and waiting and yet....I just kept feeling like I was rereading 1984. Same basic structure: a major country has been overthrown by a controlling, murderous, and mysterious group. All who could not escape live in a world without freedom or privacy. The main character is Offred, who narrates the story of her life as a handmaid. At some point, most of the world has become sterile and so procreating is controlled by the government. Handmaids are young, hopefully fertile, women who are owned by higher ranking officers to become pregnant, give birth, and then be tossed aside so the wives can raise the babies as their own. The story is creepy, but the plot felt unoriginal, and the pacing was for snails. I know I'm unpopular with this opinion and Margaret Atwood is a highly respected author, but I don't feel like I can recommend it to anyone who has limited reading time when there are so many other great books to read.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones was my first read from Alice Sebold and I was not disappointed. A copy sat on my bookshelf for about a year when I saw a preview for a movie based on the book. Of course, it was time to read it if I was ever going to get to it. (Because, as any reader knows, the book is always better than the movie.) The Lovely Bones is told from the perspective of Susie Salmon after she has been raped and killed by a neighbor. I think I was sold on the book when she names her assailant within the first chapter. I was expecting the identity of her killer to be revealed throughout the book in some sort of predictable manner. Susie was killed in 1973 when she was 14 and she narrates the next decade of her family's life as she observes from "her heaven" but is not able to interact with them. Ms. Sebold writes from Susie's perspective with a genuine voice for a young teenager gaining clarity on what has happened to her. Although sad at times (obviously) the story is also funny and thought provoking.

Entombed

Although mystery/detective novels are not usually my genre of choice I really enjoyed the story, setting, pacing, and characters in this book. It is the seventh in a series of mysteries with Alexandra Cooper as the heroin. She is a prosecutor for special victims crimes in New York City. Entombed intertwines an old case for her, the Silk Stocking Rapist, and a new case involving the uncovering of the remains of a young woman behind the wall of a building that Edgar Allen Poe once lived. I really liked Linda Fairstein's use of Poe's poems and stories as a device to propel the plot forward and educate the reader simultaneously.

Beginner's Greek

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl's phone number. Boy and girl meet approximately 10 years later. Will they ever get together? Well, we all know the answer to that. Although somewhat formulaic, the path to getting together was interesting as it wove the couple's story with their acquaintances, family, and friends. Although I felt out of my league with the higher-end living of New York City as a setting, I still enjoyed the descriptions of furniture, artwork, and buildings. Peter and Holly (boy and girl) are both very likeable main characters, which really kept up my incentive for reading. Beginner's Greek is a good read if one is in the mood for "chick-lit".

The Help

I think only a native to Mississippi could write such an engrossing tale of the ties and tensions between white women and the black maids who work for them in 1962. Kathryn Stockett wrote the first person narratives (there are three of them) with confidence and honesty. The three narrators are Skeeter, a young white woman fresh from college and looking for her place in life, Aibileen, an older black maid who is mourning her only son's death, and Minny, a younger black maid with a husband and kids to help support even though her smart alec remarks keep her from being able to hold onto a job for too long. The three of them begin a project which is dangerous for all of their lives: they write down the stories of maids in the homes they work in with hopes that it will become published. The Help is very personal, but also has historical threads running through it that keep it grounded. I highly recommend this book.

The Senator's Wife

Narrated alternately between Meri and Delia, this novel is primarily set in 1994 when the women become neighbors in homes with a shared wall in New England. Meri has recently "married up" after having grown up in a depressing home with almost no nurturing. She is not very concious of her search for a mother figure. Delia is an older woman who has been living alone, separated from her retired senator husband. They become friends, but there's a distance between them as they both face their struggles to find contentment in their circumstances. I enjoyed this novel at first, but it became laborious in the middle. The main points had been made and I was ready to move along. I recommend this book for someone in the mood for "chick-lit with some meat to it".

The Gargoyle

Andrew Davidson's first novel, The Gargoyle is a story told by an unnamed narrator. He begins his story with his terrible car accident which ends with him being badly burned over most of his body. He makes it clear that his physical features and physical (sexual) prowess were the focus of his life prior to the accident. When everyone in his life has abandoned him, save the medical staff, he is visited by Marianne Engel. She begins to tell him her life story and eventually his. She believes that they met and fell in love in a German monastary when she was a nun and he was a mercenary brought in after being burnt in a battle. Dante's Inferno is a continual plot device, which is expressed as irony by the narrator several times. The story is excellent, well woven and organized, although sometimes it was obviously Mr. Davidson's first book. The writing doesn't feel as natural and flowing as authors with more experience. That said, I recommend it even though one may not normally enjoy the genre of fantasy. This includes me. I was actually a couple chapters into the book before seeing the tiny pegasus on the binding which indicates "fantasy" at my library. Oblivious me didn't realize The Gargoyle was included in said genre. Ah well, a good story is a good story.