The BookFetish Blog

Today I held an urn in my lap. It was cold and unyielding, but it contains what little pieces of you remain on this earth.  It is not the same as a hug from you- a hug I’ve missed for many months now, but it is the closest I can get.

And I felt, strangely enough, a bit of peace as I held your urn.

I am wearing one of your rings.  The one you bought in Hawaii when I took you for your birthday in 2007.

Tonight we will melt dark chocolate on saltine crackers.

It’s your birthday. You aren’t here to share it with us, but we will still celebrate you.

This is the book the everyone is talking about right now. The one that has a “twist like Gone Girl” and has 910 (at the time of writing) five-star reviews on Amazon; an average 3.96 rating on Goodreads with over 27,000 ratings.  And it was good.  But I guessed the twist. So that makes it slightly less awesome for me.

That being said, if you liked Gone Girl or you like books like Gone Girl where you know things just aren’t quite what they appear; if you like fast-paced reads that do make you wonder if what you’re guessing is right, then The Girl On The Train is definitely one you should check out.

From Amazon:

“Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.”

This was a quick, enjoyable read.  I don’t know that I agree with emotionally immersive in the way the Amazon synopsis means it, but I will say the most intriguing part of the book to me was Rachel’s struggle with her own demons.  And I did keep turning pages, wanting to know what happened next. This was a terribly fast read for me, encompassed largely in one day, so I was not at all bored by the story.

But I guessed the twist (and so has everyone else I have talked to who has read the book), so I can’t quite give it five stars. But I can tell you this:  for something engrossing, engaging, and highly entertaining, The Girl On The Train is one you will want to add to your reading list.

I LOVED M.O. Walsh’s My Sunshine Away. I’ve struggled with this review because I loved every moment of reading the book- even the uncomfortable parts- and I want to do it justice and I want you to read it and love it like I do.

From the Amazon Summary: A debut novel, My Sunshine Away “unfolds in a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom. But in the summer of 1989, when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—experiences a horrible crime late one evening near her home, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of Southern suburbia has a dark side, too.

In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.”

Walsh’s writing style is what really drew me in and kept me turning pages.  I simply like the way he writes- honestly, and without melodrama. And the picture he paints- you see Lindy, you see our narrator, you feel as if you are there, watching it all. I don’t think a word is wasted in his narrative. He tells a compelling story that allows you to feel the emotions of the characters tempered by the perspective that maturity, distance, and growing up would provide.

And these characters are real. The plot is authentic. Anyone growing up in the suburbs in the timeframe of the novel will recognize the environment, the families, the stories.

The parts of this I most want to share with you are the parts you simply must read for yourself.  I don’t want to give anything away. I want you to savor it yourself, but at the same time itch to read faster because you just are that immersed in the story.

In a way it’s a shame I read this book in January.  It’s set a high bar for all the other books I read this year.

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  This is one you want to be on the  early side of. Entertainment Weekly just blurbed about it in the issue that arrived on Friday.  My Sunshine Away is being released Tuesday, February 10, anywhere new release books are sold.

There’s always been a lot of talk about whether or not William Shakespeare did indeed write all those plays and sonnets. Lea Rachel explores that idea in her novel, The Other Shakespeare.

From the Amazon publisher’s summary :

Judith is talented, creative, and driven to accomplish great things. But, alas, she has one “shortcoming” that stands in her way—she’s a woman.

Set in sixteenth-century England, The Other Shakespeare tells the tale of Judith Shakespeare, older sister to the famous William, as she struggles to develop her talent and gain acceptance in a world that won’t recognize her because of her gender. Consistently denied her independence, she’s forced to engage in extreme measures to get what she wants out of life—and to make difficult decisions that will shock and surprise you.

Written in the vein of character transplant novels like Grendel, Ahab’s Wife, and What Happened to Anna K, Lea Rachel’s novel brings new life to a character that first appeared in another publication. Judith Shakespeare was originally introduced in acclaimed author Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece A Room of One’s Own—and now Judith’s full story is told in this speculative piece, which answers the ultimate question, “What if Shakespeare had been born a woman?”

The Other Shakespeare was a charming read.  I expected it to be more of a conspiracy between William and Judith, but instead got much more than I bargained for with Judith’s story.  Gender politics abound, and Judith’s frustration at her lot in life simply by being born female was palpable to me as I read the book.

I’m not terribly familiar with Virginia Woolf’s writings, so I didn’t catch all but the most obvious references to her, but I did catch a number of tips of the hat to Shakespeare throughout the book.  These little nuggets made the reading that much more interesting.

I can’t say too much more about the plot of the book for fear of inadvertently giving away the ending. But I will say that I should have seen the ending coming more quickly than I did- this is Shakespeare, after all, even if it’s Judith rather than William.

Fans of the Bard should definitely give this one a read. 

I should have known. Wild is an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and that should have been enough to send me to the “Nope, not going to read it” line.  And I didn’t read it for a long time. But then Reese, who I liked until that Atlanta traffic stop “Do you know who I am?!” incident happened, made a film version. And people kept talking about Wild like Cheryl Strayed was the most enlightened person since… well, Oprah? and I finally decided to give it a read and judge for myself.

I confess, in this case, I read many reviews before I read this book. I’m not sure if that colored my reading.  I like to think they didn’t, because for every one star review, there’s a five star review.

But overall, I am meh about the book.  And I had a visceral reaction to Strayed.  I really shouldn’t let that affect my reaction to the book, but it does.  What she did, setting off to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone and unprepared,  was monumentally, appallingly stupid and dangerous.  It risked her life, and could have endangered others.

Aside from that, here are the things that just stuck with me while reading the book.

1) In describing a male nurse treating her mother in the hospital, she says something like “… and sometimes he just said no, his voice as soft as his penis in his uniform…” Really? Who says this? Ever?  That’s the best simile she can use? Is it an attempt to show that while she is dealing with her mother dying, she’s still noticing the opposite sex?  It just struck me as weird, put in there for shock value or… something.

2) I have to suspend belief to buy this whole tale.  Despite reading a guidebook for the PCT “at least a dozen times” before embarking on her journey, it never occurs to Strayed to take practice hikes with her pack before beginning? In fact, she doesn’t even pack it at all until the morning she embarks on her quest, and then can’t believe how heavy it is. Listen, I’m generously described as an armchair backpacker, and even I know you need to break in boots and gear  and do lots of little overnights before you undertake something of this magnitude.   I kept thinking of Legally Blonde, paraphrased, “Do you think she just woke up one morning and decided to hike the PCT?”

3) Strayed can describe, fifteen years later, in excruciating detail, what it was like to kiss and sleep with her random hook-up in Ashland, OR, on a twenty-two hour date. But her description of things on the trail are generic at best, and borrowed from guidebooks at worst. In fact, her most descriptive experience on the trail, Crater Lake, is of a location and experience that is able to be accessed by weekend hikers. Am I part of the camp who thinks Strayed didn’t really hike the trail like she says she did? I don’t know. But I do find it interesting there’s no photos in the book of her journey and very few real descriptions of what she might have seen along the way that couldn’t also be found in guidebooks, other’s tales, or day hikes.

4) Unlike a lot of the reviews and blogs I have read about Wild, I never really warmed to Strayed and felt her angst and redemption. It just didn’t ring as authentic to me.   First- and the part I admittedly struggle with the most- is Strayed’s complete inability to cope with her mother’s death. A part of me feels like that was an excuse for her to indulge in any and every bad behavior she wanted to.  And I find it hard to believe that after a heroin addiction and copious cheating on her husband that he was ready to just take her back?  Maybe. But it reads more self promoting than a sincere reaction- a way to paint herself in a better picture, if you will.  Second, the horse. REALLY? You let that horse starve, and then, well, I skimmed over a lot of that passage because I was so sickened.  I didn’t have the stomach to read that part in full and was so disgusted by the cruelty I considered not finishing the book.

5) I can’t decide how I feel about Strayed’s reactions to all her trail interactions.  From what I understand, the hiking and backpacking community is pretty supportive, but it was other people who made it possible for make it as far as she did.  Other people got her through the biggest obstacles of her trip, obstacles that were often of her own making.  And the time she was asked to leave a campsite she hadn’t paid for? She took it as a personal injustice, that they should have just let her stay and that the couple was mean for enforcing the rules.  It just bothered me.

6) I never got the payout that has made this book so life-changing for other people.  For whatever reason, I didn’t feel the personal epiphany, the freedom, the climax of the journey.

Sorry, folks. I just don’t get what all the fuss is about with this one.