Laurel returns to her childhood home to gather with her younger sisters and brother to prepare as their mom gets sicker and sicker. Laurel keeps thinking back to the day when she was a teenager and she saw a man walk up to her mom, argue a bit and then saw her mom stab the man, killing him. Laurel never questioned it as a child but now that her mom may not be with them much longer, she wants answers. The story splices what Laurel finds with a narrative from her mother during 40s era England, during the Blitz of WWII.
The real pull of the book here is Dorothy's story. How she wound up in England, who she fell in love with, who she made friends with, and how the war impacted her. Laurel and her siblings didn't do anything for me, aside from her role in driving Dorothy's story forward. Even then, sometimes Laurel and the family were taking up pages and not doing anything for the story. This book definitely could have been shorter if not for that.
In Dorothy's story, there was always something about her that just didn't seem right. I was happy when the ending confirmed my thoughts and thought that it was really well executed. What a thrilling way to end a book! I enjoyed this.
First Line: "Rural England, a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, a summer's day at the start of the 1960s."
Rating:
(4/5)
When Luke returns home after burying his wife of sixteen years, Natalie, after she passed away from cancer, he focuses on his three children and keeping a normal life for them. At the front door, he notices a blue envelope with Natalie's handwriting addressed to him. She has written him a letter, from more than a year ago, in the event that she doesn't survive. She reminds Luke that she loves him and didn't want to leave him. Luke clutches to this additional piece of his wife.
I really enjoy Douglas Coupland. I've read many of his novels with Microserfs at the top of my list, followed by Girlfriend in a Coma and All Families are Psychotic. I like the weird characters and even weirder situations they get in to.
Scully moves to Ireland ahead of his expecting wife and child, as they purchased a cottage in Ireland on whim. Scully needs to fix the house up, Jennifer his wife needs to sell their home in Australia. The Irish quickly notice a new person in the area, despite the cottage being rather remote, and Scully makes friends with Pete-the-Post who delivers his mail but also helps him with odd jobs. Pete delivers a telegram informing Scully that Jennifer has sold the house and she's coming with Billie on Sunday.
Xinran is a radio show host that talks about women's issues. This gives her access to women all over China to hear their stories because they trust her and it's easy to open up to her. As China "opens up" following the revolution, women are finally able to speak about their stories. Xinran tells us these women's stories, as it seems that even in the 90s, China still wasn't quite ready for them. These stories include tales of rape and abuse. The Red Guard takes away parents who don't believe in Communism, an earthquake destroys a village, a child keeps a fly as a pet while she's in the hospital. Each story is unique and each has the ability to break your heart.
Drew is a smart, but lazy, American ex-pat living in Turkey. When his friend Kadir asks him to hide something for a day and someone ends up murdered because of it, Drew knows he's stumbled upon something dangerous. With a background in religious studies, Drew finds out that previously undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls are at stake here. These scrolls are expected to have knowledge in them that would change Christianity, which makes it not too surprising that so many people are after these scrolls and that they are willing to kill for them.
When Ava finds out she's HIV positive, and her hair styling business starts to dry up because those in Atlanta are scared of her, she decides she needs a change of scenery. Ava returns to small town Michigan, where her widowed sister still lives. Joyce is happy to have Ava back, and puts her to work helping with her woman's group, the Sewing Circus. Joyce is trying to educate the women of the small town on how they should be treated, safe sex, child care, and other essential life skills. Of course, not everyone in the town agrees with these teachings and try to throw a wrench in Joyce and Ava's plans.
Zack Lightman is a video game geek. He's spent countless hours honing his craft and has become one of the top ten ranked players of Armada. Then, one day, he sees one of the enemy's fighter planes outside of his school's window. Zack decides he's losing it, just like his father did before he died.
In this epic sequel of Pillars of the Earth, we're taken back to Kingsbridge. The church has been standing now for a while, John the builder is long gone, but similar problems with the town still exist. There's a guild who doesn't treat people fairly, the priory only cares about power, and the sprinkling of good people seems to be less than those out for themselves. We're introduced to Merthin, a talented builder that descends from John, Caris, a very independent young lady who wants to learn how to help heal people, Gwenda, who comes from a poor family and doesn't want to stay that way, and Ralph, Merthin's brother who is mean spirited and wants to become a knight.
Rachel takes the train every day. Each day, the train stops at the same part and she can see in to the back yard of a couple whom she has given her own stories too. This house is only a couple homes down from her ex-husband, his new wife, and their baby. This is a farce though, Rachel hasn't been employed for weeks and has no where to go. Instead, she drinks until she blacks out. One of the nights she blacks out, the woman in the house that Rachel spies on goes missing. Rachel thinks she may have been involved but she can't remember.
Carlotta Carlyle is an ex-cop, current private investigator. Needing some extra cash, she decides to help out a friend and is put undercover as a secretary for the big dig, a huge over budget in Boston to put roads underground. Carlotta is searching for fraud on the worksite, and ends up working in the same trailer as those running the entire project. She's also taken on a missing persons case, hired by her landlord. Carlyle has her hands full working on both these cases.