Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama What an interesting story. Hana is the main character and has Werner's syndrome which makes her age two times as fast as normal, so she is in her 30s but in the body of an 80 year old. Her mother Cate is in her senior days and her own health is failing but she spends her days taking care of her daughter. Add to that a long lost friend, Laura, the same age as Hana and a recently deceased father/husband who both Hana and Cate are grieving. The story is told from the perspective of both Hana and Cate and then at some points through the narration of the friend's daughter, Josephine. I really liked the plot line and think there was a very unique story being told. The lines of mother daughter relationships, aging parents, sick children, distant friendships, etc. The one thing I am finding about this author though that I do not like is that she often makes choices that I don't always understand. Authors make very deliberate choices of what is and is not included in their stories, and usually I appreciate the choices being made. With this author I just feel a bit confused at times at the random introductions of characters or at the conclusions of story lines.
My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares I really did not like this book. It had such promise but I think it fell short on delivery. The concept was a little more supernatural then I go for but I like the author, still do, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The main character, Daniel, has spent centuries falling in love with the same woman. The story works on the assumption that souls are reincarnated after death but that most souls don't remember or aren't aware this is happening. In Daniel's case he is of a select few that do remember and he continues to seek out the soul of his love. I liked the historical aspects and the plot line was definitely unique. That being said, my problem with this book was that it just wasn't believable. In general I'm not a fan of science fiction/fantasy, but I'm willing to attempt it but the writer has to paint the story in such a way that I can believe what I'm being sold even if it's in the realm of the unbelievable. I need the author to provide me the setting and the story in such a way that it becomes believable in spite of all other evidence. Sadly this just didn't happen with this book.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz I really did not like this book. It started out grabbing my attention but it never really went anywhere. It tells the story of a Dominican American family, mostly through the perspective or story line of the main character Oscar Wao. Wao is an obese teenager living in New Jersey as a first generation American and caught between his mothers Dominican culture and his American culture as a teen going through adolescence. We follow Wao through his tumultuous adolescence along with his older sister and their mother and various family members and friends along the way. The writing was actually very good but for me the story never went anywhere. Overall I was disappointed and still am not sure of what the author was trying to convey, a message that should be very clear to the reader.
Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton Love this author and her ability to guide you through her works exactly at the pace she wants you to go at. This story is of a mother with two children who is at a field day with her children when the school they go to is caught on fire. She finds her young son quickly is safe but realizes her older daughter helping in the nursing office is still in the building. Both she and the daughter are badly burned and taken to the hospital. Her husband is a TV media star and therefor very much in the public eye. As both the mother and daughter attempt to recover an investigation into the reasons for why the fire, deemed an arson, was started. The cool part though is that the entire story is told through the perspective of the mother as a narrator as she is in a coma in the hospital. Both she and the daughter's spirits? souls? whatever are able to communicate and move about and hear conversations about the investigation as their bodies lie in the hospital beds. Normally this is not the type of book I would have loved and enjoyed reading, but the author made this supernatural idea believable and as a reader I was immediately involved in the suspense and how the book would turn out for each of the characters. Have yet to be disappointed with anything I read by this author.
Quotes: "What must it be like to hold someone's life in your hands? How heavy Jenny's must be for him, weighted with our love for her." "When I was twenty weeks pregnant with Jenny, I found out that her ovaries were already formed. Inside our unborn baby daughter were our potential grandchildren (or at least the part of us that would be a part of them). I felt the future curled up inside me, my body a Russian doll of time."
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister So far all the books I've read by this author flow in the same style. Some main central storyline and then lots of stories radiating out from it. In this one there is a chef in a restaurant who hosts a cooking school once a month. Each new chapter tells the story of one of the students in the cooking school. I liked the book enough but the trouble for me is that the story just isn't memorable enough. Just as soon as you start to like a character and want to see what happens with them, their story wraps up quickly and on to the next. Overall though these books are good for lighthearted quick easy reads which I will continue to use them as.
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min This is a historical fiction piece about the life of China's Madame Mao. The book is divided in three parts telling the reader of the childhood, early adulthood, and finally years as Madame Mao. I hadn't really known much about this piece of Chinese history before reading this book and was fascinated by the Madame Mao character. I had to keep reminding myself that even though this was a fictionalized account, the main character was in fact a real woman in history. It was a little easier for me as a reader who didn't have as much knowledge into this piece of history, to follow the story as I think the author wanted the reader to. We are given a glimpse into the future and the ultimate end of Madame Mao before being taken all the way back to her childhood. It's easy to sympathize with the character as well as continue to wonder how she will end up with her future husband and at her ultimate end. The one gripe I had with this book was that it was divided into small chunks with breaks in between and at each break the tense would change. At first this was an interesting way of adding history in with the first person account but after awhile it became a bit too much to follow when the main character was speaking and when we as readers were hearing from an unknown narrator.
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