Quick, grab a pen and paper....

We'll wait till you've got something to write with.


*drumming fingers*


Got it?  Okay, now write this down:

The novel is called The Human Bobby and it's written by Gabe Rotter.

This is the one book A Reader's Respite wants you to read because....WOW.  Just wow.  Wow. 


Bobby Flopowski has it all.  He pulled himself up out of his poor Brooklyn childhood and became a successful, wealthy pediatrician in Los Angeles.  He marries well and for love.  They have a child.  They have it all. 

Until one fateful day, everything changes.

And Bobby ends up with nothing.  No job, no house, no wife and no child.  How does this happen?

We can't tell you more than that.  There may be twists, there may not.  A Reader's Respite doesn't want to spoil the stunning effect of reading this novel.  What we can tell you is that we idly opened the book to the first page, mistakenly thinking this was just another literary fiction novel.  Literally we did not put the book down until we turned the last page two hours later.  Despite a passel of toddlers beating on each other with trucks and dolls.  Despite Mr. RR yakking at us (we don't know about what).  Despite a refrigerator repair man dismantling our broken fridge.

Just read it.

We'll wait here patiently until you return here and tell us, "WOW!"




The Small Print

Title:  The Human Bobby
Author:  Gabe Rotter
Genre:  Literary Fiction with a big dose of Psychological Drama
289 pages
ISBN:  978-1-4391-6811-0
Source:  Newman PR
Grade:  A+

Side Note to Megan:  This is one big serving of humble pie.  This book will most assuredly rank high up in our Year's Best of the Best.  ;)

In which our imagination kicks into overdrive...

Title:  We Need to Talk About Kevin

Author:  Lionel Shriver

Genre:  Literary Fiction (Contemporary)

ISBN:  978-0-06-112429-7

Book Source:  Purchased Copy

Grade:  A-

You should know right off the bat that A Reader's Respite has an overactive imagination.  No one can create a mountain out of a molehill like we can.  And while we feel that everyone should be proud of their unique abilities, this is probably not a trait we should encourage in ourselves.

For example, we recently picked up a copy of Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, an epistolary novel featuring personal letters from the mother of a teenage school shooter.  Yep, you read that right.  Gutsy topic.

This is our first Shriver novel and we admit that she hit one out of the ball park here.  The novel is Eva's recollection of her now-imprisoned son's upbringing....a soul-searching of where (if at all) Eva and her husband, Franklin, went wrong parenting this troubled teen whose explosive act of violence is mind-boggling.

Now here's where A Reader's Respite's imagination went awry:  as Eva recounts  her son's upbringing, Shriver's writing is so completely engrossing that we couldn't help but compare Kevin's every developmental milestone with our own erstwhile four year old (aka, Big Kid). 

As our imagination drew more and more parallels with Kevin as a youngster, we began giving Big Kid the evil eye every time he spilled his milk at lunchtime or tore the leg off his sister's Barbie.  By page 200, we were thinking:  Holy crap, we're living with Chucky.  For reals.

By page 300, we were perusing the Yellow Pages for child interventions and military schools.  Shriver had us entirely convinced that we have been harboring a miniature psychopath under our very roof.

Okay, okay....so by the end of the novel, A Reader's Respite finally figured out that Shriver is presenting the possibility that parents can do all of the right things and tragedy might still strike.  (Big Kid was finally allowed out of Time Out and heaved a tremendous sigh of relief at this point.)  But she leaves her themes open for interpretation -- making this novel the supreme Book Club choice -- and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about Eve and Franklin's parenting styles.

Aside from drawing the reader into serious moral and ethical quagmires, Shriver keeps the narrative moving along at an intense pace, despite her tendency to get a little fancy with her vocabulary choices (did someone get a shiny, new thesaurus for Christmas that year?).

Add to that a absolutely shocking twist at the end (we swear, we never saw it coming!) and you have a novel most deserving of the Orange Prize....which it indeed won in 2005. 

We Need to Talk About Kevin was Shriver's first literary best-seller (her previous seven novels went virtually unnoticed).  It's interesting to note that she claims it was rejected by thirty publishers before word-of-mouth reviews sent her to the best-seller list. 

If you're a parent, this book invokes endless thought and discussion, especially when you learn that Shriver herself is NOT a parent.  How accurately can an author delve into the parenting psyche without having experienced it themselves?  You decide.  Read the book.

(Oh, and feel free to call us if you need Military School recommendations afterwards.)

*******

Many, many thanks go out to Linus's Blanket and Farm Lane Books for their accolades and recommendations of Shriver's work!

Where's our Kleenex?

Damn, where did we put our Kleenex?

A Reader's Respite is starting to worry that we're going soft in our old age.  We recently acquired a copy of George Bishop's new novel A Letter to My Daughter and damned if we didn't puddle up.  This short (only 126 pages) novel packs a pretty big punch.

Written as one long letter from a mother to her runaway teenage daughter, the big mystery here is how a man managed to so completely capture the mystical mother/daughter bond.  Bishop is both subtle and insightful throughout and whether you are a mother, a daughter, or both, even the most cynical reader will see parts of themselves reflected on the pages.  It's beautiful writing.  The ending was a trifle too trite for A Reader's Respite's taste, but we're willing to forgive just this one time.


Now where did we put the Kleenex?






To the FTC Henchman who has been stalking us:  This particular book came from the Amazon Vine Program.  You wanna piece of them?  The giant Amazon machinery eats FTC enforcers for lunch.

Dysfunction Junction

No one does dysfunction quite like author Zoe Heller.  Perhaps best known for her Notes on a Scandal, Heller has given us another cast of not-entirely-likeable characters in her latest release, The Believers, the story of a family falling apart at the seams.

Don't go looking for the good guy in this book because there isn't one.  The Believers centers on an uber-liberal and self-righteous family living in New York.  Liberal attorney Joel, who defends suspected terrorists in court, has been felled by a stroke and his wife and grown children hide behind hypocrisy and lies as they try to find their place in this world without Joel.  Joel's snotty British wife Audrey quickly becomes a character you absolutely love to hate --- the best kind, eh?

Part compelling family drama, part character study and part social commentary, The Believers delves into one family's psyche and, for the most part, comes out shining. It would be impossible to read this novel and not become cognizant of your own family dysfunction.  Each character both draws you in and repels you at various points, leaving the reader with an increasing need to find the truth within the pages.

Does Heller deliver the truth?  Well, that's up to each individual reader.  Suffice it to say that tidy, patronizing endings are not a part of Heller's repertoire and for that, A Reader's Respite is very thankful.  If you liked Notes on a Scandal, you won't be disappointed with The Believers.

******

FTC (aka Big Brother) Disclosure:  This book winged our way from the indomitable Trish at TLC Book Tours.  Thanks, Trish!

******

Sound like your cup of tea?  Leave us a comment saying so and on March 25th, we'll draw a random winner to receive a copy of Heller's fabulous novel, The Believers.  All entrants welcome!

Back to Business.....

Have you heard about Lauren Grodstein's new novel, A Friend of the Family?



A Reader's Respite just finished reading it and what a riveting novel it is, too. This is one of those psychologically taut novels -- not what we'd call a thriller, by any means -- that keeps you on the edge of your seat just having to read "one more page."

Pete Dizinoff is a successful husband, father and doctor in suburban New Jersey. All of Pete's hopes and dreams are pinned on his teenage son, Alec. But when Alec finds himself entangled with the wild-child daughter of Pete's best friend, just how far will Pete go to ensure his son's future?

Okay, so this book would make a great book club read...lots of grist for the mill, so to speak. Grodstein writes a tight plot which closely examines the fluidity of our morals and values, as well as the consequences of our actions. Bad things do indeed happen to good people in this novel.

There is enough tension to keep you turning the pages. And the ending? It's, ummmmm, good. Not great, but good. We admittedly were a tad disappointed that the ending wasn't as high of quality as the rest of the novel. Quite frankly, that is why this will be a book we mention to our friends, as opposed to a book everyone is talking about.

But don't let this small criticism keep you from picking up the book. Mediocre ending or not, the book is worth your time.




It's your turn to read it! Leave us a comment if you're interested and we'll draw a random winner here on November 30th, so check back here then to see if you won. (International entrants welcome!)

Review: The Ten Year Nap

The Ten Year Nap, by Meg Wolitzer





In her novel The Ten Year Nap, author Meg Wolitzer examines the lives of a handful of women living in New York who left promising careers to be full time mothers. Self-doubt and regret permeate their lives as they find their children half-grown and their own potential in limbo.

A Reader's Respite really should have loved this novel. Everyone else did....from Publisher's Weekly to the Washington Post, rave reviews abound for Wolitzer's sharp insights and contemporary sharp wit.

The subject matter alone should have grabbed us. A Reader's Respite grappled with this very dilemma after the arrival of Big Kid in 2006. We wanted more than anything to be a full time mom, but commercial airlines aren't too forgiving of moms who want to take ten years off. We worked darned hard to earn our Captain's stripes and didn't want to give those up, either.

So we should have loved this book.....right?

You have probably guessed what happened. We didn't love the book. What other reviewers praised as insightful, we read as whiny. Yes, you read that correctly: whiny.

As we were reading the character's agonizing lamentations over choices they had made, we couldn't help but think, "There are tragedies in this world and this is just not one of them." Really. There are wars being waged, famines, natural disasters striking. So women worried that other women might be judging their career decisions just isn't ranking up there for us.

Petty of us? Probably. The subject matter is probably still worthy, it's just the whiny-ness we could do without.




Now remember: as my grandma used to say, there's a butt for every saddle. Just because A Reader's Respite didn't love this book doesn't mean you won't.

So if you want to give it a shot, leave us a comment and we'll draw a random winner on June 8th (international peeps welcome!). Please, enter! Then you can come back here and tell A Reader's Respite that we wouldn't know good literature if it bit us in the ass. We're okay with that.



Title: The Ten Year Nap
Author: Meg Wolitzer
ISBN-10: 1594489785
351 pages
Publisher: Riverhead
Date: March 27, 2008

For pete's sake, don't take our word for it! Read some more reviews!

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Review: Night Navigation

Night Navigation, by Ginnah Howard




Somewhere along the way, on the book highway, A Reader's Respite took a fairly dark turn and ended up reading Ginnah Howard's debut novel, Night Navigation.

This is a story of the pain and despair of drug addiction. This is the story of a mother's worst nightmare: caught between the love for your child and the knowledge that you cannot fix them.

Meet Del, a middle-aged widow, and her grown son Mark. Mark is an addict. Del wants nothing more than to save her son. The odds are against them both. Suicide, mental illness and family dysfunction are all an important part of this story that takes you into the depths of a family's anguish.

There can be no doubt that author Ginnah Howard has personally experienced the journey described in this novel. No one could possibly write this painful and poignant tale without living it first. Her sparse, yet somehow still lyrical style draw you into her world, into her characters, until you find yourself a de facto member of this dysfunctional and desperate family.

There is a price to being drawn into a tale such as this. It leaves the reader with the emptiness, no --- make that the hollowness, that comes from living with continually dashed hope. Eventually, only numbness remains.

Yet if you've ever wondered what it's like to be a parent of an addict, this novel is the closest you'll ever want to come to finding out. Despair? It abounds in this novel, but so does understanding and the depths of a mother's love.

Does we recommend the novel? That depends. If you have the fortitude to delve into dark subject matter out of a genuine desire to understand, then yes. Otherwise, you'd best skip it.

A Reader's Respite made it through to the end. And now, please pass the Zoloft. And a happy book.


And now, as is our custom around this joint, this is where we offer our brave readers a chance to win this novel. Leave us a comment and we'll draw a random winner (international peeps welcome!) on June 5th. Be sure to check back and see who won!



Title: Night Navigation
Author: Ginnah Howard
ISBN-13: 978-0151014323
304 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date: April 14, 2009


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Review: The Diary (and a tie-in)

The Diary, by Eileen Goudge



Mother's Day is rapidy approaching and the timing for Eileen Goudge's new novel couldn't have been better.

The Diary tells the story of two sisters, grown well into adulthood, who come across a diary....their mother's diary as a young woman.

Author Eileen Goudge has hit upon a timeless question: how well do any of us really know our mothers? Mothers are part of the fabric of our being. They feed us, care for us, fix us when we're broken and all too often, we take this in stride with nary a thought as to who they are as a person. Simply put, they are just mom.

Rarely, if ever, do we give thought to who our mother's really are: their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations and disappointments. Perhaps this is a natural phenomenon. After all, what if the part we - their children - played in their lives isn't what we thought it would be?

The Diary tries to answer some of these questions with a tender, heart-warming flavor. At only 224 pages, the story is too short to develop characters to their full potential, but this doesn't detract from the novel by any means.

Told in a series of flashbacks introduced by a diary entry, the reader is taken back for a look at a young woman's series of choices that may, or may not, have cost her her one true love. While the story certainly is engaging enough, it is A Reader's Respite's opinion (read: take it with a grain of salt) that the brief present-day scenes between the sisters as they read their mother's diary could have been left out entirely with no harm done.

Which brings us to our recent informal poll and many thanks to those who participated. It would seem that the use of the word "Sis" in conversation with one's sister finds somewhat common usage in the Southern U.S. For those readers who are familiar with the vernacular down South, the dialogue in The Diary won't phase you a bit. For the rest of us, however, it has moments where the use of words like "sis" creates awkward, stilted dialogue that detracts from the story.

In short, it kind of bugged us.

Still, the novel had more good points than not and would make a lovely Mother's Day read or gift. The idea of our mothers before they were mothers is intriguing indeed.



Want to read this book? Leave a comment and on Friday, May 8th, A Reader's Respite will pick a random winner!



Title: The Diary
Author: Eileen Goudge
ISBN-13: 978-1593155438
224 pages
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Date: April 7, 2009


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Review: To My Senses

To My Senses, by Alexandrea Weis


One of the side benefits (or hazards, depending on your point of view) of being an airline pilot is that after ten or twenty years, you've pretty much seen most of the world.

And while at times it can seem as if most places are interchangeable, there are still quite a few locations that never stop drawing people back.

New Orleans is one of those places and this sultry and mysterious city still lures A Reader's Respite back time after time.

It's also the setting for Alexandrea Weis' debut novel, To My Senses, a rich tale about love in the higher societal circles of New Orleans. Nicci Beauvoir is a young society woman struggling to find her place in this world. She has the charming trait of being able to see New Orleans high society for what it is and possesses that rarest of gifts: the ability to laugh at it.

Courtyard at Hotel Provencial. A Reader's Respite married Mr. RR here at sunset many moons ago.

Nicci's world, however, is turned upside down when she meets David Alexander, a mysterious artist and, as it turns out, a local gigolo. Despite her better judgment, Nicci falls in love with David and as you can imagine, this presents a whole plethora of problems.

The story is driven by it's characters and their development, which Weis does with a deft pen. Nicci and David are written with honesty and depth and the secondary characters, if not always likable, are eccentric and essential to the story.

The Court of the Two Sisters. An excellent spot for a pre-wedding brunch for the whole wedding party.

The plot rises to a crescendo slowly and is reminiscent of a sweltering New Orlean's summer. Really, it becomes hard to put the book down. And the ending? We don't deal in spoilers around here, but we will say kudos to Ms. Weis for throwing us a curve-ball that we never saw coming!

The Royal Cafe provides a darned good wedding reception.

Okay, so who's up next to read this great debut novel? If you're interested, leave a comment here and on Wednesday, April 22, a random winner will be drawn. International entrants are encouraged!



Title: To My Senses
Author: Alexandrea Weis
ISBN-13: 978-1419661112
336 pages
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Date: June 30, 2007


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Review: A Body at Rest

A Body at Rest, by Susan Petrone

When the most drunken guy at the table put his hand on my rear end and made a rather ungentlemanly proposition, I didn't slap him. I quoted Shakespeare.

"Drink provokes the desire but takes away the performance," I said. The unwanted hand was still on my rear, but you could see that he was making an honest effort to understand what he'd just heard. "Macbeth. Act two, scene three," I added, although I knew the attribution wouldn't make a difference.

A Body at Rest, by Susan Petrone

Pretty darned good start to a novel, wouldn't you say? It shouldn't be a surprise, though, considering this debut novel by Susan Petrone was a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finalist.

So here's the basics: best friends and roommates, Martha and Nina are twenty-something cocktail waitresses, aimlessly drifting through life. They drink too much, they smoke too much, they migrate from man to man. Well read and well educated, they just need to find direction.

And then on an impetuous road trip the unexplainable, the remarkable, the improbable happens. An impromtu visit to a mysterious tattoo parlor changes Martha and Nina forever.

Literally.

The girls begin to slowly turn into their favorite literary characters. Physically and mentally, Martha begins to morph into the imperious and proper Emma Woodhouse while Nina (the poor girl) slowly turns into the knight-errant, Don Quixote.

Ol' Don and his sidekick, Sancho

What follows is both hysterical and heart-breaking as each of the girls must now follow her new destiny.

Petrone writes sharp, literary-minded dialogue and the plot moves along at a pretty darned good clip. Once the characters (and the reader, for that matter) wrap their minds around what it really going on, the literary references take on a new importance and it becomes a fun challenge to see where Petrone is going with all this.

A Reader's Respite has always enjoyed novels invoking literary classics. For those of you who are drawn to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, this novel will also take you on a literary romp you won't soon forget.

dear Emma Woodhouse

You'll have to suspend belief for this one, but that is half the fun. Who we are, where we're heading and how to find our destiny is the other half. Enjoy!



If you'd like to read some of Susan Petrone's short stories, visit her website!



Title: A Body at Rest
Author: Susan Petrone
ISBN-13: 978-0982060919
268 pages
Publisher: Drinian Press
Date: January 25, 2009



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Review: Bound South: A Novel

Bound South: A Novel, by Susan Rebecca White

The Down & Dirty

Louise has her hands full. Her teenaged daughter has run amok, her son is retreating into teenaged angst, her maid's problems are her problems and her best friend is getting divorced. But these are Southern women, smack in the heart of Atlanta, and they deal with problems using two failproof weapons: humor and alcohol.

The Lit Crit

This debut novel by Susan Rebecca White is a pleasant addition to the growing Southern Lit genre. Told from multiple (female) viewpoints, White is at the top of her game in the snarky department and apparently no topic is off limits. Religion, adultry, student/teacher affairs, homosexuality and race relations in the south are all treated with equal honesty and wit.

Louise's relationship with her wild-child daughter is particularly refreshing and while sharp humor is the order of the day, White doesn't use it to sweep issues under the rug. Rather, humor is used for perspective, something most mothers need on a daily basis.

Louise and her husband, John Henry, are not perfect parents by any means. A product of their generation, they enable their children's dysfunctions at every turn, although you can hardly hold it against them:

"To be perfectly honest, San Francicso is a better place for her than Atlanta ever was. It suits her. It seemed that the moment she stepped off the plane and onto California soil she got her act together. She earned her GED, not that we're exactly beaming with pride over that, but then she enrolled at San Francisco State University. She's majoring in something called American Studies, although judging by what she's learning it should be called American Sins.

I don't mean to sound negative - I think it's important to learn about indigenous cultures and to take a skeptical stance towards government, and so on and do on - but I do sometimes get a little tired of being lectured so often by her on the Complicity of America in all things Evil...

...she seems to be okay. Of course we pay for her college classes, and John Henry sends her a small check each month to cover part of her rent, but other than that, she's on her own."

Bound South, by Susan Rebecca White
Bwahahahahah...A Reader's Respite thinks this last sentence is hysterical....

If there is any quibble to be had, it would be with the end of the novel, which had little (if any) conclusion. It was as if she just stopped writing. You turn the page, but that's it. One page the characters are at dinner and the next.....poof. The end.

Of course, not every novel needs a perfect, tightly-wrapped conclusion.

Perhaps it's an artsy thing I'm missing.


Our Recommendation

If you're a fan of southern lit or just appreciate the humor inherent in parenting, this is a fun book and certainly a worthwhile read. Enjoy the perspective this one offers!





Think you might like this book? Leave me a comment saying so and A Reader's Respite will draw a random winner next Monday, March 2 and send you the book.





Title: Bound South
Author: Susan Rebecca White
ISBN-13: 978-1416558675
368 pages
Publisher: Touchstone
Date: February 10, 2009


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Review: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, byMaggie O'Farrell

The Down and Dirty

Iris Lockhart is going about life, minding her own business and trying not to think about the fact that she is in love with her step-brother when *bam*: she finds out she has a great-aunt that she's never heard of who's been locked up in an asylum for the last sixty years. Iris feels compelled to take Aunt Esme under her wing and the novel goes on to reveal the events that led to Esme's lockup while Iris tries to sort out her own life.

The Lit Crit

Wasn't too crazy about this one. The book vacillates between Iris's life and what happened to Esme that led her to lockup in the nuthouse. It took a while to figure out that the random stream-of-consciousness passages were coming from an addle-pated grandmother and that added to the bit of confusion over the rapidly changing points of view in the novel.

Nor was the (adopted, step, whatever) brother/sister-being-in-love-thing working for us. Yes, we understand they weren't blood related. It was still creepy in a V.C. Andrews kind of way.

If you've never read V.C. Andrews, well...don't start. Just don't.

O'Farrell did a nice job of conveying the terrible conditions that existed (and still do, to some extent) asylums during the early 20th-century, but she didn't play enough to this strength. It was one of those novels that could have been great, but fell flat, although we admit the ending was pretty sharp. Ultimately, it needed more One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest quality to really work.

A Reader's Respite's other job

You've got to feel a little sorry for the book that's picked up right after you read a string of excellent novels. Any other time, it would likely have fared a better review.

Our Recommendation

Kinda meh on this one. Don't rush out today to buy it...perhaps a library checkout would be better because it does have a pretty snappy ending.

And by the way, yes it did take a little work to manage TWO Louise Fletcher references in one completely unrelated book review. No applause, please, just throw money.

Title: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Author: Maggie O'Farrell

ISBN-10: 0151014116

256 pages

Publisher: Harcourt

Date: October 24, 2007

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Review: The Only True Genius in the Family

The Only True Genius in the Family, by Jennie Nash









The Down and Dirty
Claire is a daughter, a wife and a mother. She has a career, a solid marriage and has successfully raised a talented daughter. So what's missing? As the daughter of a legendary American artist and the mother of the hottest new artistic talent to hit the scene in years, Claire is searching for her place in this world. How she finds that place, and what it takes to get there, is the journey explored in Jennie Nash's new novel, The Only True Genius in the Family.

My dad died at an incredibly inconvenient time, and I have no doubt that he planned it that way on purpose.
The Only True Genius in the Family, by Jennie Nash

The Lit Crit

A Reader's Respite is a sucker for a great opening line. Thankfully the captivating beginning to this novel went on to become a thought-provoking middle and then a satisfying ending.

The Only True Genius in the Family is an exploration of one woman's place in this world. Author Jennie Nash artfully weaves a thoughtful, character-driven story and then laces it with subtle moral dilemmas, continually prompting the reader to step into Claire's shoes.

The novel is exquisitely put together, balancing the grieving process that accompanies the death of a parent with the hope we have for our children and then finding our own place in our family dynamics.

A warning: the pages turn quickly in this novel. A Reader's Respite blew through all 304 pages in one sitting.

And that is a glorious thing.







Our Recommendation

Recommended for anyone who has ever doubted their place in this world.




Sound Interesting?

A Reader's Respite just happens to have an extra copy of The Only True Genius in the Family. Leave a comment expressing your interest and then check back here Wednesday, February 11th, when author Jennie Nash drops by and a random winner will be chosen. Open to international entrants, too!






Title: The Only True Genius in the Family
Author: Jennie Nash
ISBN-13: 978-0425225752
304 pages
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Date: February 3, 2009



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