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Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From Library Journal) The unnamed narrator of this chilling, uncomfortable first novel lives a life many men work vainly all their lives to attain: wealth, successful political career, beautiful wife, two attractive children. At the age of 50, however, the narrator has yet to feel passionately about anything--or anyone--in his life. Then his son brings home the woman he plans to marry, the enigmatic Anna Barton, and he recognizes in Anna the passion for which he will eagerly lay to waste everything and everyone in his life. Anna, tragedy ever-present in her life, warns, "Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." Unheeding, he does not veer from a path which can lead only to damage for everyone except, ultimately, perhaps Anna herself. Compulsively readable enough to be devoured in a single sitting, this novel is brilliant, but unsettling. Obsession and its aftermath can be fascinating, but never comfortable, reading.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
Oprah Book Club® Selection, September 1996
(From Amazon.com) The horror of losing a child is somehow made worse when the case goes unsolved for nearly a decade, reports Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jacquelyn Mitchard in this searing first novel. In it, 3-year-old Ben Cappadora is kidnapped from a hotel lobby where his mother is checking into her 15th high school reunion. His disappearance tears the family apart and invokes separate experiences of anguish, denial, and self-blame. Marital problems and delinquency in Ben's older brother (in charge of him the day of his kidnapping) ensue. Mitchard depicts the family's friction and torment--along with many gritty realities of family life--with the candor of a journalist and compassion of someone who has seemingly been there.
I never saw the movie, so I can't say how it compares. But from lots of experience, I'm sure the movie doesn't hold a candle to the book.
(From Amazon.com) The horror of losing a child is somehow made worse when the case goes unsolved for nearly a decade, reports Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jacquelyn Mitchard in this searing first novel. In it, 3-year-old Ben Cappadora is kidnapped from a hotel lobby where his mother is checking into her 15th high school reunion. His disappearance tears the family apart and invokes separate experiences of anguish, denial, and self-blame. Marital problems and delinquency in Ben's older brother (in charge of him the day of his kidnapping) ensue. Mitchard depicts the family's friction and torment--along with many gritty realities of family life--with the candor of a journalist and compassion of someone who has seemingly been there.
I never saw the movie, so I can't say how it compares. But from lots of experience, I'm sure the movie doesn't hold a candle to the book.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From back cover) ... describes Kerouac's life via his fictional self Jack Duluoz just before the publication of ON THE ROAD. After meditating at the brink of the world (as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak) Duluoz travels to San Francisco...etc.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
Helpful Score: 1
(From Amazon.com) A wayward wife, an Oedipally obsessed e-mail snoop, a pint-sized Civil War reenactor (oops, make that living historian), and a cheerfully oblivious cuckold comprise the Shaws of Chicago, the decidedly quirky characters of Jane Hamilton's fourth novel, Disobedience. An unlikely family to fall prey to the vagaries of modern life, the Shaws are consumed with clog dancing, early music, and the War Between the States. But they do possess a computer, and when 17-year-old Henry stumbles into his mother's e-mail account and epistolary evidence of her affair with a Ukrainian violinist, he becomes consumed with this glimpse into her life as a woman, not simply a mother.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
Oprah Book Club selection, October 1997
(From Publishers Weekly) The appealing, eponymous, 11-year-old orphan heroine of this Southern-focused debut survives appalling situations until she finds safe harbor in a good foster home. "Some readers will find the recital of Ellen's woes mawkishly sentimental," PW remarked, "but for others it may be a perfect summer read."
(From Publishers Weekly) The appealing, eponymous, 11-year-old orphan heroine of this Southern-focused debut survives appalling situations until she finds safe harbor in a good foster home. "Some readers will find the recital of Ellen's woes mawkishly sentimental," PW remarked, "but for others it may be a perfect summer read."
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From Amazon.com) Stella Payne is a Superwoman who has everything--except a man to rock her world, something she's convinced she can well do without. On a spur-of-the-moment Jamaican vacation she meets Winston, a man half her age, and finds, to her dismay, that her world is indeed well and truly rocked. Stella soon realizes that she's come to a cataclysmic juncture in her life, one that forces new and difficult questions about her passions and expectations.
The movie was better!
The movie was better!
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From Library Journal) ... fairly straightforward narrative ... Constructed on a more intimate scale ..., it is a stark, well-drawn portrait of the title character told in "scenes from the life" style, from Marya's early days of poverty, her life as an abandoned child raised by an aunt and uncle, through hard-won college success and an academic career. Marya's development and her innermost fears and insecurities are revealed in a very personal, almost autobiographical manner.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From back cover) Through a selection of documents and literary sources, this is a picture of the world of art between 1750 and 1850. The excerpts and comments concern not only artists and their work and artistic doctrines of the period, but also deal with matters of studio practice, the economic and social status of the arts, and the involvement of artists in politics and government.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
Helpful Score: 2
(From Booklist) This is an honest and frightening memoir of growing up in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Min describes a systematically deprived Shanghai childhood (the family was forced into successively meaner quarters); school days spent as a member of the Red Guard, spouting the words of Chairman Mao and being forced to publicly betray her favorite teacher; and later teen years on a work farm in order to become a peasant because peasants were the only true vanguard of the revolution. The farm years, with their backbreaking workdays and heartbreaking, lonely nights, exemplify the grinding insanity of the Cultural Revolution, the terror and dehumanization it inflicted on ordinary Chinese. Eventually, Min was tapped by the party to be in the propaganda film Red Azalea, during the making of which she suffered more humiliation and political subterfuge. What is so extraordinary is that Min managed to keep a tight hold on her spirit. Her autobiography is not just a coming-of-age story or history lesson; it is a tale of inner strength and courage that transcends time and place.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From Amazon.com) Clarice Starling, a precociously self-disciplined FBI trainee, is dispatched by her boss, Section Chief Jack Crawford, the FBI's most successful tracker of serial killers, to see whether she can learn anything useful from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter's a gifted psychopath whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Isolated by his crimes from all physical contact with the human race, he plays an enigmatic game of "Clue" with Starling, providing her with snippets of data that, if she is smart enough, will lead her to the criminal.
(Me) I thought the movie was better, but I saw it before reading the book.
(Me) I thought the movie was better, but I saw it before reading the book.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From imdb.com) Junie Moon's face has been disfigured by ill-gotten burns, and depends on her friends and her wit to cope. She, Warren, and Arthur leave the hospital - they yearn for independence - and find a house to live in. Together they stumble into adventures involving the local fish vendor, nosy neighbors, surreptitious vacations, love, and frustration in finding jobs as they face subtle prejudices in their community, and their own particular medical problems.
(Me) Apparently this was also a movie in 1970, although I have never seen it. The book is very sweet and has a good message.
(Me) Apparently this was also a movie in 1970, although I have never seen it. The book is very sweet and has a good message.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From back cover) ...uses real-world examples from Schlessinger's radio show and private practice to drive the message home. And the message is that our reticence to be bold and brave often makes us act like stupid, submissive victims. Once we muster the courage to take responsibility for our own problems and to tolerate the discomforts of risk, the possibilities for personal growth and joy are limitless.
Review Date: 1/18/2007
(From back cover) Joe Stecher and Gurlie, his wife, are a young couple of European origin settled in New York at the turn of the century and working to make a place for themselves in the new world. It is also the story of the awakening consciousness of their children; the real heroine is the baby Flossie whose birth begins the book. Everything revolves around the baby and she is surely unique in literature.
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