The BookFetish Blog

Last year, I read Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia.  I don’t think I ever reviewed it.  I’m not sure why. I loved the book and raved about it to friends, but I never sat down to write a post.  So when a friend who had also enjoyed Reconstructing Amelia said I needed to also read McCreight’s newly released second novel,  Where They Found Her  I promptly downloaded it.

This is the latest in a string of quick reads for me. From the Amazon book summary:

An idyllic suburban town.

A devastating discovery.

Shocking revelations that will change three lives forever.

At the end of a long winter in well-to-do Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of a newborn is found in the woods fringing the campus of the town’s prestigious university. No one knows the identity of the baby, what ended her very short life, or how she came to be found among the fallen leaves. But for the residents of Ridgedale, there is no shortage of opinions.

When freelance journalist and recent Ridgedale transplant Molly Sanderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the disturbing news for the Ridgedale Reader—the town’s local paper—she has good reason to hesitate. A severe depression followed the loss of her own baby, and this assignment could unearth memories she has tried hard to bury. But the disturbing history Molly uncovers is not her own. Her investigation reveals a decades-old trail of dark secrets hiding behind Ridgedale’s white picket fences.

Told from the perspectives of three Ridgedale women, Kimberly McCreight’s taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth behind the tragedy, revealing that these women have far more in common than they could ever have imagined: that the very worst crimes are committed against those we love. And that—sooner or later—the past catches up to all of us.

From the outset, I was curious about this story. I knew from Reconstructing Amelia that McCreight would weave an intricate story, providing subtle clues about the characters and their actions. I like sifting through the hints and determining if I can figure out what is really going on. Although a very different writer than Gillian Flynn, McCreight’s novels are in the same vein, so I think anyone who enjoys the complex characters and layers of Flynn’s novels will like McCreight’s storytelling. The characters are not one dimensional, and we see that the face they present may be very different than how they feel internally. We also see that outside actions that seem off-putting can actually be the result of concerned motivation, or just trying to hold it together.  We also learn that people are hiding some very dark secrets.  As the summary says, the past eventually catches up with us.

I liked the twist McCreight provides and I liked that there’s a lot of grey in this story. Life is messy, and this book doesn’t mark all characters as white hats or black hats.

Happy Reading!

Most of us are familiar with the names Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong. Thanks to Tom Hanks, “Houston, we have a problem” was used to voice concern over a situation for some time after Apollo 13 was released. But until I read Lily Koppel’s The Astronaut Wives Club, I didn’t know really anything about the women married to the astronauts.

The early days of the Space program were before my time.  Before I read this, I had no idea that NASA wasn’t selling just space exploration, but an image of the perfect astronaut and his family. I had not thought about what it would be like for those left behind on earth as these men blasted into Space. Challenger and Columbia remind us that even with all the successful missions, tragedy can still occur. I can only imagine how terrifying this adventure must have been for these women who first experienced it, waiting, hoping that above all, their loved one came home safely.

Much like First Ladies, the Astronaut Wives were a pretty exclusive club- there simply weren’t that many other people who truly understood what they were going through.

Koppel doesn’t seem to whitewash the story.  A number of these marriages were far from perfect.  The partnership with Life magazine provided a better living to the astronaut families than did the US government.  If a man was killed, there wasn’t always a good safety net, save for the women who dropped everything to go wait with a wife when bad news was coming.

Most of these women were very grateful for their experiences. Others were severely traumatized.  All in all though, they formed a bond that lasts even today. The kind of bond formed by circumstance, but is intractable nonetheless.

I enjoyed reading The Astronaut Wives Club, this glimpse into wives thrust into sudden celebrity as the Space program exploded. They were suddenly tasked with selling an image and ideal few people can ever meet, yet they handled it with gumption, intelligence, and grace.

Don’t just watch the short series on ABC. Read this book.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s Bittersweet kept me turning pages, so enthralled that I finished the book in under 24 hours.

From the book summary:

 On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it’s the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour. Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she’s ever wanted:  friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.
   But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact – and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family’s dark secrets and make Ev’s world her own.

Reading this, I thought of the Brontes: Mr. Rochester’s secrets; Heathcliff’s cruelty; Cathy’s manipulations. Yet this is a fully modern story with its own dark secrets and flawed characters. Bittersweet has some of these same themes, but in no way does the plot feel worn out or tired in this novel.

The tale moves quickly. We know there are layers to many of these characters. We get cryptic clues and deliberate misdirection. I didn’t see all the twists coming, which I really enjoyed.  The thing I liked about the characters here is that there’s no “Mary-Sue”, no overly perfect characters.  Even Mabel has her own demons with which she struggles.  But unlike Ev, Mabel recognizes her imperfections.

This is a perfect vacation read. It kept me engaged,  and I told people before I even finished it that if they like good fiction, with a twist of mystery, then Bittersweet should definitely be on their list.

Timmothy J. Holt’s Square Affair is not my normal type of read, but I decided to go a bit out of my comfort zone with this one.

Set in a small Midwestern town in the 1960s, Square Affair explores the impact of a public indecency trial on the accused, their families, and the community as a whole.

I found Square Affair a compelling read.   The small town gossip is familiar to anyone who has spent time in towns like this- everyone knows what’s going on with everyone else. Or they at least think they do.  And everyone feels free to judge without knowing the whole story.  Reading Square Affair with an eye of 2015 looking back to the 1960’s- before my time- it’s easy to see how much things have changed, and how much they have remained the same.  It’s a novel not out of place now.

The most interesting parts of the story to me were those of the accused men and their families.  Some of these men struggled mightily with who society expected them to be and who they are at their core. Each of them has a choice to make on how they want to live the rest of their life, knowing that their indiscretion and future choices impact not just them, but their families.

The spouses are an intriguing part of the story, too. Each of the women must decide if she is willing to stay with her marriage knowing what she does about her husband, or if living truthfully is better.  Similarly, this same argument plays out among parents and children and communities and neighbors.

The key is, there isn’t an obviously right or wrong answer here.  That’s the beauty of the book. It doesn’t present black and white answers, but more the inner turmoil of the people involved.   Each of the men has his own reasons for his choices, illustrating once again that we are all complex individuals with different motivations for our behavior.

I did feel like Square Affair wrapped up and ended rather abruptly.  I felt like there could have been a little more, or rather, I didn’t expect to go from the last scene in the book into an immediate Conclusion. Overall, though, I enjoyed Square Affair.   I encourage anyone with an eye towards current events to take a read of this one.

I was offered an advance copy of this book for review in exchange for an honest review.  I have not seen the published copy, so I am not sure if there are any major differences based on the difference in editions.

I don’t know precisely why all of this is coming up now, or why I feel the need to share it, but I am writing it down nonetheless.  I think it is the result of some new friends I’ve made and some books I’m currently reading. I’ve been thinking about my childhood.

I was raised on Creedence Clearwater Revival and Elvis and Johnny Cash. My dad loved to sing “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.”  I had records of The Chipmunks Go To Hollywood, and Urban Chipmunk.  We played the Beach Boys over and over again.

As a small child, I went to the beach and the pool in two-piece and one-piece swim suits.  For a long time, my only neighborhood playmates were boys and we swam together and played together, relatively unsupervised (stay withing whistling distance, be home before dark, don’t play in the yards of people you’re not playing with), with no major incidents.

When I transferrd to an evangelical private school during my second semester of kindergarten,  I was faced with a whole new set of rules that taught me quickly to live a compartmentalized double life.  Let me back up a bit, give you a little more context.

My parents were unimpressed with the public elementary school in our district.  We were not an overly religious family.  My father was not a regular church attender, my mother moreso.  They were conservative and strict but not – at least to my four year old self- overbearingly so.  My dad in particular wanted a more rigorous academic curriculum where I would learn strong math skills.  This private school was the only real option, and I don’t think my parents realized the level of indoctrination I would face.

And that began my elementary school education in evangelical schools, save one semester of fourth grade. Here’s what I learned.

At school, I learned that “rock music affects every beat of your heart,” so there I kept quiet about Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Righteous Brothers and the J. Geils Band, and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts (that surely would have been a one-way ticket to hell) and the country music that played in our car radios and home stereos.   I learned that four-year-olds- all kids, even tiny babies who can’t do anything except lay around, are born so inherently evil that if something happened and they died, they wouldn’t go to heaven unless they had accepted Jesus.  And although a part of me wondered what a four year old could ever do that would be THAT bad, it was terrifying.

I learned that the only appropriate attire for girls is dresses. And that meant restricting climbing on the playground equipment lest your business be seen.

I learned that you should always be quiet- in class (yes, of course), in lines, in cafeterias, in bathrooms, in hallways.  And that it was a privilege to be a line or hall monitor, to tattle on other students, who didn’t adhere to the code of conduct. Like the Inquisitorial Squad in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  I didn’t see the disconnect then. My own parents taught me  not to be a tattle-tale, yet it was a coveted position in elementary school.

Academically, I did learn to read at age 4 and had strong math skills.  I learned basic science alongside creationism.  And bible lesson after bible lesson.  I learned that  “O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E, Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe.”  I learned that god was always, always watching so be careful of what our eyes saw, or ears heard… you get the picture. I learned that in elementary school, I was in an ARMY!  I was being primed to fight!

In fourth grade we moved and I started a new evangelical school. I continued to learn.  I learned that appropriate reading for fourth grade students were stories in our bible class about snakes eating baby chicks – something about the mother trying to protect them but the farmer forcing a bad situation that caused the chicks to be eaten and the snake coiled up like a hose inside the barn.  I can’t recall what this was even attempting to teach us, but I know that even now I look warily at a folded hose before I go near it.  I also learned about sacrifice- a mother duck or chicken (what did these people have against our feathered friends?) sat on top of her hatchlings and burned to death protecting them from a fire.  I think this was supposed to relate to Jesus’ sacrifice to save us from (literally, in this story) burning to death.

I learned what baptist catechism was, and the glories of rote memorization.  You believed it because you memorized it.

Who made you? God made me.

What else did God make? God made me and all things.

Those are the only two I remember, but I also remember my dad being outraged that we were being forced to memorize this indoctrination.

I learned that in my own home, I sometimes couldn’t listen to my records or normal radio stations when certain friends came over, because they were only allowed to listen to the local christian station.

In fifth grade- maybe sixth- I learned it was no longer appropriate to swim with boys.  I learned that I should not attend movies- maybe renting a G-rated film was OK, but what message would it be sending to be seen going into a movie theater?  And that when I went to the mall, I should really wear the same skirts and dresses  I would wear to school, although until high school, this wasn’t a requirement.  I learned that my dad was most certainly going to hell because he didn’t go to church, and that I was failing because I had not converted him. That’s a heavy burden to place on a child.

We moved again in the latter half of  sixth grade, and I began public school for the rest of my academic career. The affects of the indoctrination have long lingered. What’s weird to me is that I didn’t see the insidiousness of it for years. And now that I have been free of it for so long, I’m getting angry about it.  Angry at the indoctrination, and a bit angry at my parents for putting me in a situation where I had to hide part of who I was to meet other people’s expectations and arbitrary rules.  That has had a lasting impact on me, something that I am just now fully understanding and changing.