Loose Girl

Loose Girl by Kerry Cohen
Memoir

Kerry Cohen was first aware of her power over men at the age of eleven. Thereupon she progressed from kissing to petting to oral sex and an increasing promiscuity.

Kerry parents went through a divorce and then her mother decides to leave to pursue a medical education in the Philippines. Kerry feels abandoned by both her mother and father. She is left with her father who does not seem to care or even to know how to parent. He often joined her friends in smoking a joint or even in providing the pot. He makes some very poor judgments. Her sister was handling the situation equally badly by isolating herself, leaving Kerry confused and seeking attention.

Attention is sought in the form of boys who show her they need her body. Kerry equates this with love, not knowing what real love is. Kerry gets more and more desperate for the attention and so-called 'love' it gives to her. Kerry tries so desperately to have a relationship but ends up dynamiting it by her neediness.

Kerry has been with so many partners she can neither recall all their names or even remember the exact number of encounters. She just wants to fill the emptiness of her soul.

Kerry realizes she needs help and seeks among other things, therapy. She finally realizes that she needs to love herself and to allow others to love her. I was appalled by her father's total carelessness in his parenting skills and her mother's total selfishness. This book shows that a parent's needs really must be secondary to the child's needs in order for that child to grow up to be a fully functioning adult.

It is a tribute to Kerry's strong will that she ended up in a loving and fulfilling relationship

First Line: "In the darkness, he touches me, his long strong fingers movong across the surface of my skin, his breath hot and real near my ear."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Stolen Lives : Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir

Stolen Lives : Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
Memoir

Malika Oufkir grew up the daughter of an important advisor to the King of Morocco. Her father's relationship with the King is so close that the King adopts Malika as a young child. While Malika enjoys spending time in the castle and being with the King's daughter, she longs for her family and eventually moves back in with them.

These times, however, were troublesome for Morocco. When Malika's dad stages a coup d'etat, he is shot multiple times and the family is taken away from their home. What results is an incredible story of imprisonment. Malika's large family (she has 6 sisters/brothers) and two friends of the family are taken and their home is immediately looted and leveled. Over the course of about 5 years they are moved to worse and worse conditions until finally, the family is split up into different cells and never let out. The living conditions are deplorable. They had little to eat and lived with rats, mice, and many insects. They stayed in this prison for over 10 years, not being able to see each other and only recognizing each other by voice, before they started to plan how to escape.

I almost stopped reading this book about 50 pages in because I found Malika's account of her earlier years to be quite boring. She provided too much detail as to royal life while I just wanted to get into the meat of what happened to her when she was imprisoned. I'm glad I stayed with it. What an amazing survival story. It's incredible that anyone could survive such conditions. I'm also surprised that Malika didn't request an audience with the King to give him a piece of her mind since she knew him so well and he seemed fond of her. I'm glad that her and her family are getting on well.

First Line: "From the living room came the strains of mambo and cha-cha music, the percussion and guitars punctuated by the arrival of the guests."

Rating:

(4/5)

Maggie Again

Maggie Again by John D. Husband
Literature

Maggie is very happy and carefree in 1926 when her father gets a dream investment job and moves from a farm in Cobbler's Eddy, Indiana to New York City. Maggie's three friends jump a boxcar to go visit her. They get locked in the boxcar and end up arriving in 1984 just as Maggie is retiring from her job as an office manager in an insurance company, although they feel only a few days have passed.

Maggie's Dad made a fortune and lost a fortune in the stock market crash and Maggie's life was not as idyllic as she would of wished for. John D. Husband relates Maggie's life, telling the reader what has happened until her retirement at the age of 74.

Maggie teaches her friends about the changes that have occurred in the intervening years and then decides to return 'home'. The three boys jump off the train to make the return journey shorter and even 74 year old Maggie does, catapulting her back to 1926. Maggie is once again the sweet 16 year old girl. Will history repeat itself or can it be changed? How will Maggie get anyone to believe in her fantastical journey?

I thoroughly loved this book. It is a charming, delightful story. This is a great debut novel and I will look forward to the next

First Line: "The Village of Cobblers Eddy, Indiana is just a collection of houses, shops and barns strung along a two lane concrete road and surrounded by rolling farmland that extends to the horizon in all directions."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

the girl who stopped swimming

the girl who stopped swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
Literature

Laurel can see ghosts. When the ghost of her teenage daughter's best friend wakes her up, Laurel's perfect little world is turned topsy turvy. Laurel does not know how to protect her daughter(Shelby) from the police investigation or even how to find out what Shelby might be hiding.

Her computer geek husband calls in re-enforcements in the form of her insipid parents. Laurel feels she needs her abrasive sister Thalia to find out some answers. Laurel is a wishy-washy character. Thalia is the complete opposite.

The answers Laurel gets are about a lot of family skeletons; the death of her uncle, her mom's growing up in a slum and her husband's true feelings about their marriage.

Although this book is not well written the story line did grab me and carry me along. I wished that Laurel would finally grow a backbone. I loved all the little twists and turns the story took. I have not read Jackson's other books so can not compare this one.

First Line: "Until the drowned girl came to Laurel's bedroom, ghosts had never walked in Victorianna"

Rating:

(3.5/5)

Death's Acre

Death's Acre by Bill Bass
Non-Fiction

This book highlights Dr. Bill Bass's life and the creation of The Body Farm. Some of the cases Bass has consulted on are detailed, sometimes with too much detail. This book is not for those who have a weak stomach.

What is very interesting is how forensic anthropology has progressed over the years. From how bodies decompose to how dead bodies host insects and how each of these can backdate the time of death. Bass relates each of these scientific innovations with real life cases. Patricia Cornwell and her relationship to the real Body Farm is also noted.

Of particular interest to me was the Bernardo case and the dismemberment of Leslie Macaffery. A colleague of Bass is an expert in saw cuts on bones.

I have read Jefferson Bass books and it is curious to note how real people are incorporated into these stories

First Line: ""A dozen tiny bones, nestled in my palm: They were virtually all that remained, except for yellowed clippings, scratchy newsreel footage, and painful memories, from what they called 'the trial of the century.'""

Rating:

(4.0/5)

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
Literature/Fiction

Laurel Gray grew up in a poor neighbourhood with her parents and older sister Thalia. The Gray parents take the kids out of the neighbourhood but there are still family secrets and connections to the town, including what happened when Laurel's uncle was shot in a hunting accident. Laurel becomes pregnant during college after a single night with David and they get married, though there seem to be some lingering questions in Thalia's mind as to whether they belong together or not.

Laurel is woken in the middle of the night by a ghost beckoning her to her backyard. What she finds is her daughter (Shelby)'s best friend floating dead in the pool while a cousin from the poor neighbourhood is staying over. As questions are asked of Shelby and her cousin Bet, Laurel starts to question her past and the ghosts that haunt her. She struggles to keep her life together, keep her past from interrupting the present, and keep her husband and sister from killing each other.

Like Jackson's other novel I've read, Gods in Alabama, the plot sucks you in right away and you keep turning the pages until you're done. While I didn't find Gods in Alabama like this, I did find The Girl Who Stopped Swimming to be like a Jodi Picoult book where it's a family crisis and the characters and their personal problems are the premise of the book.

It's not the most believable book in the world, and I found some of the twists to be predictable, but that didn't take away from the entertainment value of the book, which was high! A great book!

First Line: "Until the drowned girl came to Laurel's bedroom, ghosts had never walked in Victorianna."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

Legerdemain: The President's Secret Plan, the Bomb, and What the French Never Kn

Legerdemain by James J. Heaphey
Non-Fiction

This is the true story of an Air Force intelligence officer stationed in Morocco in 1952. The Unites States and the Soviet Union are at the height of the Cold War. Each of them wishes to dominate and control the nuclear threat so that they are not invaded by the other.

The United States on the surface supports the colonial government of the French; but the United States government really wants to bring Morocco under their influence. They secretly support the nationalistic movement as long as they are insured to have their air bases on Moroccan soil. The air bases are vital in the cold war against the cSoviet Union, as at this time intercontinental missiles do not yet exist.

The author at the time is extremely young and is trained by and exposed to agents from Britain, United States,Israel, France and the USSR. He describes how the thinking processes worked in this time period. The history of Morocco is depicted with a personal viewpoint as Heaphey lived through it. The cruelty of the French towards their 'subjects' and the complete disregard of the Moroccan royalty is disgusting. Moroccan leaders are deposed and then back on the whim of the Western governments. The author also describes the creation of the Islamic nationalists in Egypt.

The exotic settings of Casablanca, Marrakech, Cairo and Cypress amid all the intrigue make for a very interesting book. I found the fact that nuclear weapons were stored on foreign soil without either the French or Moroccan government aware of this to be very disturbing.

This is the type of book that will warrant a re-read as I am sure that I will absorb even more information a second time.

First Line: "We were surprised by one another."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Non-Fiction

Roach tackles an interesting subject in writing Stiff, a novel about the use of human cadavers. For those that donate their bodies to science once they die, what becomes of them? How can our lives be bettered by research with the use of cadavers? Roach tackles everything from organ donation to crash test dummies to cannibalism.

There's really only two ways this subject can be approached. Either seriously or with a bit of humour. Though there may be some worry that people could be offended if written with humour, I was happy to see that it had. I enjoyed Roach's sense of humor and her enthusiastic curiosity. She asked questions that I would never dare to ask but was still wondering about in the back of my mind.

Unfortunately, I found this book got a little less interesting as it started to wrap up. Roach seems to stray from subject a bit as the book comes to a close, specifically in the medicinal chapter.

Overall I enjoyed this book and the fact that the subject matter was so different than anything else. There was, however, a bit of overlap between this book and Death's Acre by Bill Bass where Roach talks about the body farm and a case that Bass also talked about in his book.

First Line: "The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship."

Rating:

(4/5)

The Little Lady Agency

The Little Lady Agency by Hestor Browne
Chick lit

Melissa Romney-Jones is fired from her real estate office job due to redundancy when an American firm merges with the office. She tries the escort business until she finds out what is really about. She decides to open up her own business helping men with social inadequacies find their way. She also shops, plans parties, entertains for clients and even dumps client's girlfriends.

In order not to embarrass her awful unappreciative father, Melissa becomes Honey, a blonde bombshell. Enter Jonathan the new real estate office manager. Jonathan seems to require more and more of Honey's time. In the meantime Melissa's family wants her to organize her sister's wedding.

This book was a lot of fun. Loved it

First Line: "My name is Melissa Romney-Jones, but you can call me Honey."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Memoir

After Susanna overdosed on drugs trying to kill herself, her parents send her to therapy. She is sent to a therapist on the other side of town and after only 30 minutes, the therapist decides that Susanna should be admitted to the famous psychiatric hospital McLean, where Ray Charles and John Nash have stayed. Just from this decision made in 30 minutes, Susanna loses a year and a half of her life staying in the hospital. They diagnose her with borderline personality syndrome.

Susanna tells of the friends she makes in the hospital and their stories. Some are sad, some are funny. But really the point of this book is to determine what defines us as crazy? And can a single doctor, in 30 minutes, really determine properly if someone belongs in a hospital? Isn't everyone a little crazy?

I found some of Susanna's commentary on her disease to be a bit tiresome, but the last chapter on it was very interesting. Having seen the movie, I was expecting something entirely different. The book is nothing like the movie at all - and in this case I found the movie to be more interesting, even if less realistic, than the book.

First Line: "People ask, How did I get in there?"

Rating:

(3.5/5)