The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton (a review)

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton is a novel about the power of friendship and the importance of reaching for your dreams. Indirectly, it is also a tribute to the women’s movement and the changes that movement helped bring about in American society. Although in some respects I found Waite’s characterization a bit weak—I had a lot of trouble keeping the characters straight at the beginning and some of them never fully came into focus, particularly the husbands—at the same time, the five main characters seemed very real to me. Clayton successfully captures the tumultuous mood of the late 60s and early 70s, reminding us of how limited women’s options were not so long ago, without being heavy-handed. (The conversation the Wednesday Sisters have about whether or not they’d take their kids to a female pediatrician is sobering to say the least.) She also manages to address a host of fairly serious issues without seeming contrived. The book is not without faults: I did find the shifts from past to present and from first to third person jarring at times. However, ultimately, I cheered for these women, I cried for them and I admired them for pursuing their dreams.

Read other reviews on these blogs:
Bookish Ruth • Caribousmom • I’m Booking It • Jenny’s Books • Leafing Through Life • Library Queue • My Journey Through Reading • Sassy Monkey Reads • Stephanie’s Written Word

For author interviews, visit these blogs:
Booking Mama • Lesa's Book Critiques

(First posted on LibraryThing on June 2, 2008)

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris (a review)

Chocolat is one of my all-time favourite books, so I was delighted to receive a copy of its sequel to review as part of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.

The Girl with No Shadow focuses less on Vianne’s story—instead it is told in the alternating voices of Vianne, her daughter Anouk and the mysterious Zozie. Joanne Harris writes each character with a distinctive voice (which was a good thing since the images identifying each section were not always the correct ones in my Early Reviewers’ copy).

While Chocolat could (almost) have taken place in the Middle Ages, this book has a much more modern feel, which contrasts more sharply with the book’s magical elements. It is also darker in tone but as engaging and as full of memorable quirky secondary characters as Chocolat was. Harris writes with her usual flair; however, I felt it took Vianne too long to clue into what was really going on and the ending stretched the limits of my credulity.

Harris has also neatly sidestepped the issue of the different endings in the book and movie versions of Chocolat, so this book works as a sequel to either. And although I generally don’t like it when publishers change the title of a novel to suit a different market, this time I think the American title better captures the darker edge of this book. (The original title was The Lollipop Shoes.)

(First posted on LibraryThing on April 7, 2008)

Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson (a review)

I was excited about reading an award-winning novel by a new Canadian author (or at least an author I had never personally heard of), but to be honest, I don’t think I would have finished reading Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson if it hadn’t been an Early Reviewer copy. I got stuck in the first third of the book (the setup before and immediately after the accident)—I found the characters stilted and almost caricatured. The middle of the book (which is actually the section called “End”) is more engaging; the characters are fuller and I was intrigued with the story of Iliana’s emerging sexuality post accident, which I felt the author dealt with very compassionately. Unfortunately, the momentum of that section didn’t carry through to the end, which fell flat, in my opinion.

Writing the novel from the point of view of a multitude of characters worked to a point: it is always fascinating to see the same characters/incidents through different sets of eyes. However, it can also make a novel feel unwieldy, with the plot spinning out in too many directions, which unfortunately happens to some extent here. I also felt that the device of using the wedding as an anchoring point in the novel, returning to it over and over again, didn’t add anything to the story, as it brought about little character development or plot movement. Overall, the novel disappointed me; the ending felt too pat, considering how hard it was to get there.

For other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
1morechapter.com • carp(e) libris reviews • I Smell Books • Mermaids

(First posted on LibraryThing on March 4, 2008)

Have You Found Her: A Memoir by Janice Erlbaum (a review)

Janice Erlbaum returns to volunteer at the shelter she stayed at nearly 20 years ago, when she was a homeless teenager. There she meets Sam, a bright young woman who reminds her of herself and who soon becomes her “favourite.” Have You Found Her is the story of what happens next.

This is a compelling and well-written book, with great pacing and a building sense of unease. It has the unputdownable quality of a novel and Janice does a great job of casually hinting that things are perhaps not all as they appear to be. And yet, for a memoir, I found this book oddly lacking in introspection. While Janice is unflinchingly honest about the feelings that Sam brings up for her, we never really find out what compels her to try to rescue Sam in the first place, other than the obvious, that Sam reminded her of herself and that she wished someone had rescued her when she was in a similar situation. Nor does Janice delve into how her obsession with Sam affects the rest of her life; instead, she glosses over her relationship with Bill, who seems too good to be true. Finally, the denouement of the book just happens too fast: I had the impression that she was jumping to conclusions—not that I’m suggesting her conclusions were incorrect; I just needed more details to understand how she came to them.

For all that, this is a fascinating book by a talented writer and I’m curious to read her previous memoir, Girlbomb.

To read other reviews of this book, visit these sites:
Booking Mama • Bookslut • Caribousmom • Leafing Through Life • meeyauw • Musings of the Book Goddess • Pop Matters • The Sleepy Reader

(First posted on LibraryThing on January 28, 2008)