impossible

"Impossible" by Nancy Werlin is excellent - it's actually for teenagers, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. The story of a young girl trying to solve a family curse was inspired by the lyrics of "Scarborough Fair" and the book is wonderfully clever and enthralling. It's like "Twilight" in that it's about teenagers encountering fantastic and magical people, but it's extremely well-written. I'm a sucker for a grown-up fairy tale about how love is the true magic.


"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is a charming and quaint series of letters. The chorus of voices and characters are vibrant and well-differentiated. The setting - occupied islands off the coast of England - is novel and intriguing. I knew nothing about this time period and was really interested in learning about the hardships - the isolation, the slave labor camps, the small acts of bravery such as farmers trading around the same dead pig to show the Germans so they could keep their live pigs for themselves. It's the kind of book that you can predict the cozy ending once you're 100 pages in. My only comment is that it's gotten so popular and praised that I fear it could suffer from the same paradox that affected my viewing of the movie "Once" - it dazzles when you aren't expecting much, but if you expect a masterpiece you probably will be disappointed.



"Petite Anglaise" by Catherine Sanderson is a blog-to-book story of how she had an affair with one of her blog readers. It's pretty average, yet an entertaining glimpse of what it's like to live in Paris. The narrator does not come across very well - narcissistic, self-indulgent and immature. Even worse is her sleazy lover who piles on the charm until their relationship becomes real and then can't uphold his promises. They seem like they both love big dramas. If you're in the mood for drama in Paris, it's a decent popcorn book.


"The Wednesday Sisters" by Meg Waite Clayton seems like it was written for me - friendships over the decades set in Palo Alto. I was prepared to love it. But the characters were flat and hard to differentiate. Another really annoying element was the clunky editorializing, jumping in to explain to the reader that things were different back in the '60s. The reader knows that social attitudes were different. It took me out of the story to have it explained that interracial couples were taboo back then or that divorce was stigmatized.

Currently reading: "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson. I read it with my heart overflowing with love and tears in my eyes. Its spare beauty requires attention.