The Abortionist's Daughter

by Elizabeth Hyde

I'm not a diehard fan of thrillers or whodunnits. I'll pick one up occasionally if the jacket description makes me believe the book isn't just about trying to figure out who did what. This book falls into that category.

Diana Duprey, a notorious abortion provider in Colorado, is found dead in her lap pool. Suspicion falls on the likely suspects: her husband, with whom she had a loud disagreement hours before her body is discovered; the followers of the local right-to-life protesters; even an old flame of her husband's.

The book does a good job of fleshing out the relationships Frank and Megan had with Diana as husband and daughter, respectively. This saved the book for me since I had a very strong suspicion as to who did her in from very early in the book--even if I was right, it didn't matter--I read on because I enjoyed how who Diana (along with Megan, in particular) was slowly revealed through conversations and memories, and not just through narrative.

The way the story also details the relationship between Diana and Megan was a clincher for me. It was a great anatomy of mother-daughter tension--if I can remember this story if I ever have a daughter someday, it sure will provide a balm in her adolescence.

Lisey's Story

By Stephen King

Stephen King is in my top two picks of favorite writers of all time. (The other is John Irving. And since I love JK Rowling's Harry Potter, I would've given almost anything to have been able to attend the reading these 3 gave in NYC last August to raise funds for...a really good cause that I can't remember.) I still hope desperately to get to meet him someday--I'm hoping he'll be included in the National Book Festival next September.

I fell in love with SK after reading Pet Sematary, of all books. (Read it during my first trip to the US. Had nightmares the rest of the trip. Wouldn't have done it differently, let me tell you.) I've loved SK even as he's grown from being a writer of seriously entertaining and scary stuff (basically, much of his work written in the 70s and early 80s) to not-so-scary-in-the-gives-you-nightmares way but still awesome stuff (The Stand, Dark Tower) to the more psychologically-twisted stuff (Misery, Bag of Bones). I think the only book I had to stop reading out of sheer lack of interest was Tommyknockers.

Lisey's Story is both a horrorfest and a psychologically twisted tale with many layers of narrative. There's Lisey's 25-year marriage to a famous, successful writer named Scott Landon, who's been dead for 2 years due to reasons that aren't revealed till the very end. There's Lisey's relationships with her sisters. There's Lisey being stalked by a Dark Prince of Incunks (don't you just love the wonderful gift SK has for words?). There's the story of Scott and his father and brother and how those relationships colored his relationship with Lisey. And lastly there's the story of Boo'ya Moon.

I think I'm too old to get nightmares from having read this book, though I have no doubt my 17-year old self would've been scared shitless. But I really enjoyed this story completely. I'm not certain it's among his books that I'd happily re-read again and again (that list includes the Stand, Different Seasons, Pet Sematary, The Shining, Salem's Lot, It, The Talisman, Wizard and Glass, Eyes of the Dragon, and most of the stories in his large story anthologies). But I'd certainly re-read it at least twice more in the future!

What I loved most about this book was how real a picture it painted of marriage--and of a good marriage, at that. It did that so well that I ached for Lisey, having lost Scott at such a young age (48 is pretty young nowadays, right?). It made me think, unwillingly, that someday Benjie or I will be alone and widowed as well, and that made me infinitely sad. (Benjie hopes he'll go first.)

The language was also unbeatably King. The secret language between Scott & Lisey made me think of the unique dialect that's sprung up in my relationship with Benjie. It's nowhere near as rich and colorful as the Landons' but we've only been married 9 years (almost).

One of my greatest hopes is that SK lives to a ripe old age, and that he will continue to draw from his pool and share what he draws with us.

The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner

I love Jennifer Weiner. She's the smartest of the "chicklit" set, if you can even count her among them, and I don't. Her girls have real troubles, and no deus-ex-machina saves them--they save themselves.

This collection of short stories is wonderful not just for a mother with a drastically reduced attention span or reading time. Each story feels real--esp. the trio of stories in the beginning that reflect the years following Jen's own parents' divorce. I was also cringing and dying to yell at the Jess, the central character in Buyer's Market--how could she NOT see how she was being used? How lonely and weak could she be? And I loved Swim, with its character who is used to being invisible or pitied or both discovering that she can be seen and appreciated as she is.

In fact, the story I enjoyed least is the title story. JW admits it's sort of a homage to Stephen King's "Word Processor of the Gods". It feels too sci fi/fantasy for me. JW has a great gift for fleshing out the lives of everyday girls--I would be happy if she stuck to that.

Helen of Troy by Margaret George

I don't consider myself a fan of mythology, which is odd considering how much I enjoyed the survey we had of Roman & Greek mythology in high school. But I've forgotten much of it, and I never read any of the Greek classics--I felt that their synopses were quite enough.

This book is enough to get me to change my mind--to at least go and find a palatable version of Bullfinch's Mythology and trace the different families and family trees. I really enjoyed the humanized Helen, and how Margaret George chose to re-work the Iliad and Odyssey to include the humans' voices, but exclude the gods'.

I loved the perspective that it wasn't undying love that started the Trojan War, but a war-hungry king anxious for his own glory.

I loved its explanation of how the Trojans could be fooled by a giant wooden horse.

I think I actually benefitted from NOT knowing the stories of Helen or Paris or Menelaus (except from the movie Troy--and I had a hard time imagining Achilles as not having the face of Brad Pitt, though it was easy to not picture Orlando Bloom as Paris)--each unfolding element in the story was new and surprising and had literary integrity.