Book Review: How To Love An American Man by Kristine Gasbarre

Wednesday 17 August, 2011 By 7 Comments

Title: How To Love An American Man
Author: Kristine Gasbarre
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publication Date: August 16, 2011
Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0061997396
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

Kristine Gasbarre made a New York career of dating driven, inaccessible men. When she realizes her love life will never result in happiness if she continues on the same path, she makes a big decision—relocating to Italy to discover her roots and find out what defines her adoring grandpa. But upon receiving the news of his sudden passing, she is lured away.

With nowhere left to go, Krissy returns to her small hometown for the first time in a decade to help care for her grandmother—a refined, private matriarch suffering from early dementia along with the loss of her husband. In her reluctant agreement to share the nearly lost love stories and transformative lessons from her rich sixty-year marriage, Krissy’s grandma becomes the one offering comfort as she coaches her granddaughter through the fear of loving. Grandma’s unapologetic femininity and secret giving spirit opens Krissy’s eyes about relationships, teaching her the single most important requisite for loving a man: first a woman has to learn the power of her own inner beauty.

My Review:

How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre is a thoughtful and honest memoir about relationships and how the author learned the most valuable lessons about them from her grandmother.  Readers will learn how Gasbarre had difficulty in her relationships with men and rather than blaming others for her failures and misgivings, she turns to her recently widowed grandmother for a steady hand in life.  The memoir is well-written without superfluous passages and refreshing for its honesty as Gasbarre does not make excuses but instead seeks answers, opens her mind to others, and learns to become introspective.  Readers will feel close to the grandmother as she, suffering from her own very emotional loss at the death of her husband of sixty years, lends her heart, experience, and wisdom to her granddaughter.  Gasbarre ultimately shows her readers how she went to help her ailing and grieving grandmother and wound up helping her in ways that could not have been foretold.  Gasbarre was drawn to her grandmother in a time of need, yet she also provided her grandmother with something that was recently lost; that feeling when someone needed her.  How To Love an American Man is a good choice for those looking for an uplifting memoir.

About the Author:

Kristine Gasbarre lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is a celebrity interviewer and a culture and lifestyle contributor to women’s publications. She is a graduate of John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, and Fordham University in New York City, with degrees in psychology and media studies. Her last name is pronounced the Italian way, except in her hometown, where it rhymes with “raspberry.”

To learn more about author Kristine Gasbarre please visit her website at: www.kristinegasbarre.com/

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , , ,

Book Review: Wendy and the Lost Boys by Judy Salamon

Tuesday 16 August, 2011 By 6 Comments

Title: Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein
Author: Judy Salamon
Publisher: Penguin Press HC
Publication Date: August 18, 2011
Hardcover: 480 pages
ISBN: 978-1594202988
Genre: Biography

A snippet from the Publisher’s book description:

The authorized biography of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

In Wendy and the Lost Boys bestselling author Julie Salamon explores the life of playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s most expertly crafted character: herself. The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. But with her high- pitched giggle and unkempt curls, she projected an image of warmth and familiarity. Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein. Or thought they did.

My Review:

Wendy and the Lost Boys by Julie Salamon is a compelling biography of the great playwright Wendy Wasserstein, chronicling much of this fascinating woman’s life through access to the personal correspondence and notes of the late playwright.  Readers will be exposed to the less public persona of Wasserstein, seeing her amidst the sea of achievements garnered by her brothers and sisters and how she struggled for identity throughout much of her life.  It becomes abundantly clear from the careful research by Salamon and her telling of the story of Wasserstein’s life that this remarkable woman chose theatre as her podium from which to show the world who she was, how she was influenced, and the people who changed her in profound ways.  Readers will relish the successes in Wasserstein’s career, including The Heidi Chronicles and Uncommon Women and Others, beam with her in the love she shared with others, and cry with her through her darkest moments.  Salamon has captured the essence of Wendy Wasserstein and brings the playwright’s life to center stage in Wendy and the Lost Boys, a story only previously revealed through her dramatic tales played out by others and now told through a gifted author whose meticulous research has made the story possible.  I recommend this biography, Wendy and the Lost Boys, to all readers.

About the Author:

Julie Salamon is the author of Hospital, about Maimonides Hospital, as well as the New York Times bestselling The Christmas Tree; the true-crime book Facing the Wind; the novel White Lies; the film classic The Devil’s Candy; a family memoir The Net of Dreams; and Rambam’s Ladder. Previously a reporter and culture writer for the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New Republic. She lives in New York City.

To learn more about Judy Salamon and her books, please visit her website: juliesalamon.com.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of Wendy and the Lost Boys by Judy Salamon from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , ,

Book Review: Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

Friday 12 August, 2011 By 6 Comments

Title: Let’s Take the Long Way Home
Author: Gail Caldwell
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
Paperback: 224 pages
ISBN: 978-0812979114
Genre:  Memoir

From the Publisher:

They met over their dogs. Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story) became best friends, talking about everything from their love of books and their shared history of a struggle with alcohol to their relationships with men. Walking the woods of New England and rowing on the Charles River, these two private, self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with cancer. With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion, and courage in this gorgeous memoir about treasuring a best friend, and coming of age in midlife. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of the profound transformations that come from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.

My Review:

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is a beautiful and heartbreaking memoir about the author’s friendship with fellow writer Caroline Knapp.  In what could only be described as a poignant and heartfelt account of life, loss, grief and healing, Caldwell tells of how she and Knapp became friends, how the common threads that brought them together closed a vast divide in their respective upbringings.  Readers will delight in the flowing and descriptive prose that Caldwell pens about and reflects upon the moments that built her friendship and how these moments, ones that may be difficult to recognize at the time because they are the ones we often take for granted, are truly the ones that matter.  While very sad at times, Let’s Take the Long Way Home offers a piece of Caldwell’s heart to her readers, lending her deepest thoughts, her best moments and those that were so painful.  This memoir shows how it is the way in which we cherish our moments that give us our strength, how these moments prepare us for those times when all seems lost, and how the bonds of friendship prevail even through death.  I highly recommend Let’s Take the Long Way Home to all readers and think discussion groups looking for an emotional memoir with strong lessons will enjoy this book.

About the Author:

Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , ,

Book Review: Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund

Thursday 11 August, 2011 By 7 Comments

Title: Adam & Eve
Author: Sena Jeter Naslund
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: July 26, 2011
Paperback: 384 pages
ISBN: 978-0061579288
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

By decoding light from space, Lucy Bergmann’s astrophysicist husband discovers the existence of extraterrestrial life; their friend, anthropologist Pierre Saad, unearths from the sands of Egypt an ancient alternative version of the Book of Genesis. To religious fanatics, these discoveries have the power to rock the foundations of their faith. Entrusted to deliver this revolutionary news to both the scientific and religious communities, Lucy becomes the target of Perpetuity, a secret society. When her small plane crashes, Lucy finds herself in a place called Eden with an American soldier named Adam, whose quest for both spiritual and carnal knowledge has driven him to madness.

Set against the searing debate between evolutionists and creationists, Adam & Eve is a thriller, a romance, an adventure, an idyll—a tour de force from Sena Jeter Naslund, one of the most imaginative and inspired writers of our time.

My Review:

Adam and Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund is a very interesting novel that explores the neverending battle between evolutionary scientific evidence and creationist beliefs through the experiences of Lucy and Thom Bergmann.  Set in the period about the year 2020, when Thom collects evidence for extraterrestrial life, he entrusts the information only to Lucy as Thom calculates that the world would not be prepared to receive such knowledge.  Naslund writes an interesting plot that takes readers alongside Lucy as she works to keep her now late husband’s information from becoming public knowledge.  In what is slightly too coincidental, Lucy is contacted by her late husband’s colleague who has discovered an alternate form of the book of Genesis and now Lucy must keep that information from leaking out as well.  The book’s title is an allusion to the place where Lucy finds herself after her small aircraft crashes in a place called Eden where she meets Adam, an American soldier who is not sane.  While I am not a fan of futuristic tales such as Adam and Eve, the basic theme of the divide between science and religion is truly engaging.  Naslund crafts a compelling tale in which she chose to pull out all stops to develop the plot, but unfortunately in doing so, the book’s overall coherence and direction appear blurred and misguided.  For me, it felt as if too many low probability events happen for Lucy when Naslund’s theme could have been more compellingly developed without making so many pieces fall into place.  While the novel was not in my favorite genres, Adam and Eve gives readers a lot to think about and I think fantasy/futuristic reading fans will enjoy Naslund’s Adam and Eve.

To learn more about author Sena Jeter Naslund, please visit her blog at: senajeternaslund.wordpress.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

Tuesday 9 August, 2011 By 10 Comments

Title: Domestic Violets
Author: Matthew Norman
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0062065117
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned thirty-five, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day.

The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords, his pretentious archnemesis Gregory, and a hopeless, completely inappropriate crush on his favorite coworker. Oh . . . and his dog, according to the vet, is suffering from acute anxiety.

Tom’s life is crushing his soul, but he’s decided to do something about it. (Really.) Domestic Violets is the brilliant and beguiling story of a man finally taking control of his own happiness—even if it means making a complete idiot of himself along the way.

My Review:

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman is an excitingly funny, yet tragically realistic debut about Tom Violet, a married man in his thirties who is encountering what is probably best described as the onset of mid-life blues.  Norman captures many of the sentiments felt by men and women alike who are at points in their lives where they ask questions such as: How did I end up with this kind of life?  Perhaps it is troubles with marriage, or an identity crisis stemming from aspirations to be as successful as one’s parents, or a job that is unrewarding, or co-workers who just make going to work dreadful at times.  Though these are fairly common feelings to encounter, Norman has christened Tom with each of these afflictions.  Readers will delight in Norman’s humor as Tom navigates his various predicaments with a not-so-nimble step that is rarely fully morally grounded.  Told through Tom’s eyes, it is easy to laugh along with some of his actions and cry in other circumstances, and with characters in Tom’s life so well developed, there is a lot of experience for everyone to relate to.  This is a story where most everyone should feel as though they know what Tom is experiencing as his trials are those that most experience at some point in life in one form or another.  I recommend Domestic Violets to all readers.

About the Author:

Matthew Norman is an advertising copywriter. He lives with his wife and daughter in Baltimore. Domestic Violets is his first novel.

To learn more about Matthew Norman, please visit his blog at: www.thenormannation.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: What Language Is by John McWhorter

Monday 8 August, 2011 By 8 Comments

Title: What Language Is: And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be
Author: John McWhorter
Publisher: Gotham
Publication Date: August 4, 2011
Hardcover: 240 pages
ISBN: 978-1592406258
Genre: Non-Fiction, World & Language

From the Publisher:

New York Times bestselling author and renowned linguist, John McWhorter, explores the complicated and fascinating world of languages. From Standard English to Black English; obscure tongues only spoken by a few thousand people in the world to the big ones like Mandarin – What Language Is celebrates the history and curiosities of languages around the world and smashes our assumptions about “correct” grammar.

An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, What Language Is offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. From vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does. Packed with Big Ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, What Language Is explains how languages across the globe (the Queen’s English and Surinam creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply, and divide. Raising provocative questions about what qualifies as a language (so-called slang does have structured grammar), McWhorter also takes readers on a marvelous journey through time and place-from Persian to the languages of Sri Lanka- to deliver a feast of facts about the wonders of human linguistic expression.

My Review:

What Language Is: And What It Isn’t And What It Could Be by John McWhorter offers a detailed, often funny, and mostly educational journey through the human language.  McWhorter varies his approach to what readers might at first glance think should be a dull subject, by mixing linguistic analysis with wit and offering wonderful applications and examples for the common reader.  One need not know anything about linguistics to find interest, new knowledge, pleasure and entertainment in What Language Is.  McWhorter directs a fair bit of attention to English linguistics, but he also gives readers a global tour of languages, pointing to many interesting differences among world languages and leaves readers wondering what exactly defines a language and where are differences among similar languages more appropriately classified based on dialect?  This is a book for readers of all genres because it cuts to the very depths of our own usage of language, analyzes, discusses and then offers illustrative context in modern language evolution and development.  In the age of blogs, text messaging, tweeting and social networking, McWhorter has picked an opportune time to share his views on language and he does so with charm, wit and knowledge of the subject.  I recommend What Language Is to all readers without reservation.

About the Author:

John McWhorter is the author of the bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, and four other books. He is associate professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor to The City Journal and The New Republic. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, Politically Incorrect, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a copy of What Language Is by John McWhorter from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , ,

Book Review: Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz

Friday 5 August, 2011 By 5 Comments

Title: Northwest Corner
Author: John Burnham Schwartz
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: July 26, 2011
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-1400068456
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

The New York Times Book Review called Reservation Road “a triumph,” and the novel was universally acclaimed. Now, in a brilliant literary performance by one of our most compelling and compassionate writers, John Burnham Schwartz reintroduces us to Reservation Road’s unforgettable characters in a superb new work of fiction that stands magnificently on its own. Northwest Corner is a riveting story about the complex, fierce, ultimately inspiring resilience of families in the face of life’s most difficult and unexpected challenges.

Twelve years after a tragic accident and a cover-up that led to prison time, Dwight Arno, now fifty, is a man who has started over without exactly moving on. Living alone in California, haunted yet keeping his head down, Dwight manages a sporting goods store and dates a woman to whom he hasn’t revealed the truth about his past. Then an unexpected arrival throws his carefully neutralized life into turmoil and exposes all that he’s hidden.

Sam, Dwight’s estranged college-age son, has shown up without warning, fleeing a devastating incident in his own life. In its way, Sam’s sense of guilt is as crushing as his father’s. As the two men are forced to confront their similar natures and their half-buried hopes for connection, they must also search for redemption and love. In turn, they dramatically transform the lives of the women around them: the ex-wives, mothers, and lovers they have turned to in their desperate attempts to somehow rewrite, outrun, or eradicate the past.

Told in the resonant voices of everyday people gripped in the emotional riptide of lived life, Northwest Corner is at once tough and heart-lifting, an urgent, powerful story about family bonds that can never be broken and the wayward roads that lead us back to those we love.

My Review:

Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz is a brilliantly crafted novel about families and their ability to survive in spite of adversity and challenges.  The characters are developed in masterful fashion as Schwartz employs multiple, alternating points of view to learn how Dwight Arno, a fifty-year-old man who just finished prison time after forever altering the lives of the Lerner family, and is beginning life anew with a girlfriend and new job.  A tale about secrets, truth, love, and redemption, Dwight, after facing his own mistakes now must deal with his estranged son’s own transgressions.  Readers are brought through the heartaches that still plague the Lerners, the sense of emptiness from their own loss, while also bearing witness to the psychological turmoil that the Arno family is striving to endure.  Schwartz, in a deliberate and beautiful style, captivates the reader’s attention with suspense and empathy for each of these flawed and damaged characters and while Northwest Corner follows on from Schwartz’s novel Reservation Road where his characters first come to life, his latest work is perfect as a stand alone novel.  With so many familial emotions and experiences in the Arno and Lerner families, there exists an abundance of topics for book discussion groups and I highly recommend Northwest Corner to all readers.

For more information about author John Burnham Schwartz or his books please visit his website at www.johnburnhamschwartz.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , ,

Book Review: Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eyre Ward

Thursday 4 August, 2011 By 8 Comments

Title: Close Your Eyes
Author: Amanda Eyre Ward
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: July 26, 2011
Hardcover: 272 pages
ISBN: 978-0345494481
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

From the Publisher:

In Close Your Eyes, the author of the bestselling How to Be Lost spins another mesmerizing tale of buried family secrets.

For most of her life, Lauren Mahdian has been certain of two things: that her mother is dead, and that her father is a murderer.

Before the horrific tragedy, Lauren led a sheltered life in a wealthy corner of America, in a town outside Manhattan on the banks of Long Island Sound, a haven of luxurious homes, manicured lawns, and seemingly perfect families. Here Lauren and her older brother, Alex, thought they were safe.

But one morning, six-year-old Lauren and eight-year-old Alex awoke after a night spent in their tree house to discover their mother’s body and their beloved father arrested for the murder.

Years later, Lauren is surrounded by uncertainty. Her one constant is Alex, always her protector, still trying to understand the unraveling of his idyllic childhood. But Lauren feels even more alone when Alex reveals that he’s been in contact over the years with their imprisoned father—and that he believes he and his sister have yet to learn the full story of their mother’s death.

Then Alex disappears.

As Lauren is forced to peek under the floorboards of her carefully constructed memories, she comes to question the version of her history that she has clung to so fiercely. Lauren’s search for the truth about what happened on that fateful night so many years ago is a riveting tale that will keep readers feverishly turning pages.

My Review:

Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eyre Ward is an intense story of tragedy, clouded conviction, and the sense of loneliness it left for Lauren Mahdian whose father was convicted of murdering her mother when Lauren and her brother, Alex, were respectively six and eight years old.  Now in her twenties, Lauren begins to uncover secrets pertaining to her mother’s murder, gripping readers’ attention as the plot unfolds.  Ward develops each of her characters carefully and deliberately throughout the novel, providing readers with a sense of knowing, and appreciating the complexities of Lauren, her brother and their relationship.  Masterfully crafted prose brings the story to life, a story about guilt, love, trust and redemption as played out in Lauren’s quest for truth in her mother’s death.  Memorable for its emotion and beautiful prose, Close Your Eyes is a fictional drama that I strongly recommend and can imagine a lively discussion group conversation on this emotionally compelling tale.

For more information about Amanda Eyre Ward or her books please visit her website AmandaWard.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eyre Ward from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , ,

Book Review: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Tuesday 2 August, 2011 By 17 Comments

Title: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
Author: Jenny Wingfield
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: July 12, 2011
Hardcover: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0385344081
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Every first Sunday in June, members of the Moses clan gather for an annual reunion at “the old home place,” a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. And every year, Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed young preacher, brings his beloved wife, Willadee Moses, and their three children back for the festivities. The children embrace the reunion as a welcome escape from the prying eyes of their father’s congregation; for Willadee it’s a precious opportunity to spend time with her mother and father, Calla and John. But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core: John’s untimely death and, soon after, the loss of Samuel’s parish, which set the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change.

In the midst of it all, Samuel and Willadee’s outspoken eleven-year-old daughter, Swan, is a bright light. Her high spirits and fearlessness have alternately seduced and bedeviled three generations of the family. But it is Blade Ballenger, a traumatized eight-year-old neighbor, who soon captures Swan’s undivided attention. Full of righteous anger, and innocent of the peril facing her and those she loves, Swan makes it her mission to keep the boy safe from his terrifying father.

With characters who spring to life as vividly as if they were members of one’s own family, and with the clear-eyed wisdom that illuminates the most tragic—and triumphant—aspects of human nature, Jenny Wingfield emerges as one of the most vital, engaging storytellers writing today. In The Homecoming of Samuel Lake she has created a memorable and lasting work of fiction.

My Review:

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is an extraordinary debut by author Jenny Wingfield who tells of one young preacher’s encounters with sin, forgiveness and their aftermath.  Set in 1950s Arkansas, what has become an annual event for the Moses clan, bringing together Samuel and his wife, Willadee, with many family members and friends including Willadee’s parents, Calla and John.  The tragic death of John rocks the family to its core and ultimately brings about transformations in the family that forever emblazon John’s life in their memories.  Wingfield masterfully crafts her characters with real flaws and traits so believable that readers will gain a sense of knowing her characters. I was particularly touched by the Moses’ 11-year-old daughter, Swan, whose friendship with Blade is both heartbreaking for the parental abuse that Blade must endure and heartwarming for the love, safety and compassion Blade finds in his new found friend.  Wingfield has shown her talent in this tale that contrasts good and evil, sin and redemption, animosity and compassion.  Book discussion groups will find this debut to be an excellent choice to branch out into discussions of many universal themes. I highly recommend The Homecoming of Samuel Lake to all readers.

About the Author:

Jenny Wingfield lives in Texas with her rescued dogs, cats, and horses. Her screenplay credits include The Man in the Moon and The Outsider. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is her first novel.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: ,

Book Review: The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman

Monday 1 August, 2011 By 8 Comments

Title: The Rules of the Tunnel: A Brief Period of Madness
Author: Ned Zeman
Publisher: Gotham
Publication Date: August 4, 2011
Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN: 978-1592405985
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

A journalist faces his toughest assignment yet: profiling himself. Zeman recounts his struggle with clinical depression in this high- octane, brutally funny memoir about mood disorders, memory, shock treatment therapy and the quest to get back to normal.

Thirty-five million Americans suffer from clinical depression. But Ned Zeman never thought he’d be one of them. He came from a happy Midwestern family. He had great friends and a busy social life. His career was thriving at Vanity Fair where he profiled adventurers and eccentrics who pushed the limits and died young.

Then, at age thirty-two, anxiety and depression gripped Zeman with increasing violence and consequences. He experimented with therapist after therapist, medication after medication, hospital after hospital- including McLean Hospital, the facility famed for its treatment of writers, from Sylvia Plath to Susanna Kaysen to David Foster Wallace. Zeman eventually went further, by trying electroconvulsive therapy, aka shock treatment, aka “the treatment of last resort.”

By the time it was over, Zeman had lost nearly two years’ worth of memory. He was a reporter with amnesia. He had no choice but to start from scratch, to reassemble the pieces of a life he didn’t remember and, increasingly, didn’t want to. His girlfriend was gone; friends weren’t speaking to him. His life lay in ruins. And the biggest question remained, “What the hell did I do?”

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and hopeful, The Rules of the Tunnel is a blistering account of Zeman’s twisted ride to hell and back-a return made possible by friends real and less so, among them the dead “eccentrics” he once profiled. It’s a guttural shout of a book, one that defies conventional notions about those with mood disorders, unlocks mysteries within mysteries, and proves that sometimes everything you’re looking for is right in front of you.

My Review:

The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness by Ned Zeman is an informative, yet entertaining memoir covering the author’s own personal struggles with depression.  Zeman writes with a uniquely stylish sense of humor throughout his book, one of the more memorable examples for me being his description of experiences with Adderall.  In this intriguing style, Zeman tells how his career and his life as a whole went from success to near obliteration as he succumbed to an illness that, through all the therapy, hospitals and treatments, was only defeated with the help of his friends. Readers will find his style to be influenced by his writing career as a journalist and that his approach is quite honest and does not embellish or sugar-coat his experiences with clinical depression nor with mental illness in general.  Perhaps the saying that “laughter is the best medicine” is  best portrayed by Zeman’s work dealing with mental illness and having a few laughs while conveying his own personal experience with such a serious illness.  I recommend The Rules of the Tunnel to all readers and especially to those not familiar with depression and how it impacts the life of the afflicted.

About the Author:

Ned Zeman is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he has covered a wide range of subjects: crime, politics, Hollywood, and outdoor adventure. He has also written for Newsweek, Spy, GQ, Outside, and Sports Illustrated. Two of his articles have been finalists for the National Magazine Award, and he cowrote the screenplay for Sugarland, the forthcoming film starring Jodie Foster. He lives in Los Angeles.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received an arc of TheRules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

Filed Under: Book Review, Book Tour Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »