Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

In my quest to read a really good book, I headed to the list of Pulitzer Prize winning fiction.  I had heard of Olive Kitteridge so I thought I would give it a try.  It's set in Maine about a Mainer so that's a huge plus for me.  Love Maine!

Olive is a math teacher, married to Henry.  They have one son, Christopher.  Olive is a large woman, she wears size 10 shoes.  And she's not a warm or friendly person, short on words and quick to judge others, but not mean or unkind. She's trying to figure out why others can't see the world the way she does, since hers is the right and only way.  We follow Olive through a large cast of characters in the town of Crosby, Maine, who seamlessly float in and out of her life.

After I've read a book and before I write a review, I usually search the Internet to see what others have said about the book.  News to me was that Olive Kitterridge is considered a collection of 13 short stories.  As I mentioned, many of the chapters told stories of other people in town, the clerk who worked in Henry's pharmacy, the alcoholic piano player at the local tavern, or Jim O'Casey, a fellow teacher who Olive considered having an affair with.  Olive threaded through each story so that I didn't see them as separate and distinct.  Although sometimes I felt the segways were disconnected, I always felt that the lives of the others, developed Olive's character more deeply.  People come in and out of our lives, sometimes staying for years, but most often for only a fleeting moment. The book gave me as a reader, the sensation of life as it happened all around her. 

Olive Kitteridge is beautifully written.  Olive is not a really likeable person, yet I couldn't help liking her.  Her feet were planted firmly on the ground, yet sometimes they weren't.  She was real and I followed her around town as if I were doing my daily errands.  And I loved the feeling I got from reading Olive Kitteridge.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

I've lived in Florida for thirty five years, so I'm a huge fan of Karen Russell.  I love her quirky Florida tales.  Swamplandia! is one of my all time favorites.  St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was one of my early blog posts.  I've been anxious to read Vampires in the Lemon Grove simply because it's written by Karen Russell.

Clyde, the vampire now lives in an Italian lemon grove having discovered that sucking on lemons can take the place of his need for human blood. Young girls in Japan are sold, given a pill and then sent to the silk factory.  They spin silk from their fingertips.  American presidents find themselves reincarnated as horses.  A young boy crosses the prairie carrying a window that is passed among neighbors when the inspector makes his rounds.  In order to certify ownership of the homestead, their sod homes must have a window. 

Let's just say all the stories in this book are extremely creative and imaginative.  I might even say they are bordering on the bizarre except for the fact all deal with the human condition. When that is the center, anything is possible. 

My only disappointment is that none of these stories are set in Florida. The tales in Vampires in the Lemon Grove span the globe and are not for the faint of heart.  But if you can let your imagination flow, you are in for one wild and incredible ride. 

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I'm on a roll lately, and it's not the good kind.  I've read a slew of books in the past few months that I haven't really enjoyed much.  Reading a good book is what keeps me going.  Needless to say I'm feeling a bit sluggish. 

Every newspaper and magazine I opened had rave reviews for Lila.  Since I'd been in a slump, Lila seemed to be the answer to breaking the chain of disappointment.  I had no prior knowledge of Ms. Robinson's other titles, or that one of them had won the Pulitzer Prize. 

I don't even want to give you a recap of the plot, there was so little of it.  This book has no chapters and I'm a reader who likes to have those nice breaking points since I mainly read before going to bed.  Frankly, Lila seemed to me like one big run on sentence.  But what disturbed me the most was that I couldn't understand Lila's place in time.  I kept picturing her in a bonnet and a long dress with lace up shoes circa the late 19th century and then she was eating a tuna fish sandwich.  She belonged to a group of wanderers who went from town to town looking for work. And then she got a ride in a car. Toward the end, Lila went to the movies and saw To Have and Have Not placing her squarely in the 1940's. I'm confused.

I couldn't join Lila on her journey. I couldn't picture in my mind's eye how she looked, the clothes she wore or much of anything about her surroundings.  When I finished the book, I read some more reviews to try to uncover what I missed.  That is how I found out she was in Iowa, and that the story had begun in the 1920's.  A reader shouldn't have to research a story to understand what's been read.  A reader should be fully immersed in the surroundings and the passion of its characters, walking in their shoes, step by step.  Lila will continue to remain a mystery to me.

The Autumn Balloon by Kenny Porpora

The Autumn Balloon by Kenny Porpora

I happen to love a good memoir because real life can be so much more interesting than fiction.  When I saw a 4 star review for The Autumn Balloon, I thought I was in for a real treat. 

Kenny is a kid who wants to fit in, but how can he, when he's shuffled from one alcoholic, drug addicted parent to the other.  He's often homeless, living in the backseat of his mother's car.  When she loses custody, Kenny and his brother end up in their father's filthy basement with a pig and a pedophile living upstairs.  When the custody battle heats up again, the boys return to their mother in Arizona.  I don't want to forget to mention, that every other word out of their mother's mouth begins with an "F".  Donna Reed, she is certainly not. 

That Kenny was able to lift himself out of this situation is nothing short of a miraculous.  He graduated from Columbia with a master's degree in journalism.  I admire him for that.  But did I feel this book was worthy of a top review?  No. 

The Autumn Balloon is filled with heartache and emotion.  It paints a powerful picture of poverty and addiction in our country, which often go hand in hand.  As a writer myself, I felt however, the story construction was too simple, unpolished and paced too quickly.  I raced through it, unable to linger in the pain as well as the joy.  The Autumn Balloon tells a story of life that should be told.  I didn't however, find that it was written in a way that merits the glowing reviews that initially caught my eye.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is a brilliant author, she's a Pulitzer Prize winner after all.  Her stories revolve around families of all shapes and sizes, who live in and around Baltimore, Maryland.  She paints vivid pictures of her characters with calming prose.  A Spool of Blue Thread doesn't disappoint in any of those areas.

Abby and Red Whitshank have raised their children in a stately home built by Red's father, Junior.  The house is a central character to the story, the glue, so to speak that keeps them together.  When the children determine that Red and Abby are getting too old to live alone, the secrets the family harbors try to bubble up from their long buried hiding places. 

For me however, I just plain didn't get it.  The opening scene revolves around Denny, Abby and Red's son who has always been a little strange and aloof.  Denny remains distant throughout the story and the reasons why the book opened with him, were never really resolved.  At least in my mind.  I found this book, though beautifully written, long and drawn out, without any resolution.  None of the characters took the time to change or had any cathartic moments that forced them to.  I know that some of you that have read this book might disagree with that statement because things did happen to this family.  But they all seemed to brush off any events that had some depth and move along as if nothing had changed.

It's the struggle that makes a book worth reading.  I was reading pages from anyone's ordinary life without a rip or a tear that need to be sewn back together.  A Spool of Blue Thread never took the time to mend what truly needed mending.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown


A family member, who is also an avid reader, recommended this book to me.  It was time for me to delve in to something historical.  There is nothing like a slice of the past to keep me grounded in the present.  The Boys in the Boat did exactly that.

The boys in the boat are the 1936 rowing team from the University of Washington.  Through a series of ups and downs in the middle of the Great Depression, the tenacious group made their way to the Berlin Olympic Games and won the gold medal.  The story is told through the eyes of Joe Rantz, a poor farm boy who struggled to stay in school and stay on the team.  Joe is part of a cast of characters from George Pocock who painstakingly built the boats, to Al Ulbrickson who coached with his eye on the prize.

This is not a story about rowing, even though I did learn quite a bit about the sport.  It is not a story about the Great Depression which serves as a backdrop and guides many of the men's actions.  This is a story about teamwork, drive and ambition, staring evil in the face and winning.  The author did a wonderful job of showing life in America during this time as being slow and simple. People rallied around each other, sharing what little they might have.  Just when the reader became fully immersed in the American lifestyle, he yanked us into an evil world during the rise of the Nazis.  The contrast was startling. 

Society today could learn more patience from this story. The Boys in the Boat takes us to a world that once was and should never be again.  Well worth reading. 

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

I'm not a hiker or a backpacker or even much of an outdoorsy type, but I wanted to read this book because of the empowerment it gives to women.  I wish I had the guts to do what Cheryl did, hike all alone, making her way along a rugged trail with only her instincts to guide her.  Several years ago I took a rafting trip with my sister along the Colorado River.  We hiked out of the Grand Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail, and even though it was the hardest thing I'd ever done, it changed my life.  My trip came with hoards of slimy frogs and so did Cheryl's.  I can relate.

Cheryl's life was troubled at best.  Her childhood was far from normal. The loss of her mother to cancer, and a failed marriage led her to a life of loose sex and drug addiction.  In turn these things set her on a path to search for something different.  That day in the sporting goods store when she came across a book on the Pacific Coast Trail shifted her trajectory.  I believe in fate.

Wild is a fascinating story of survival.  However, I couldn't help feeling something was missing.  One day she's shooting up heroin and the next she's hitching a ride to the trailhead.  The two parts didn't seem to add up to me, like she'd purposely left out a part of the story.  Her mother played a large role in her decision to hike the trail.  She loved her mother very much.  At one point in her journey, Cheryl comes to the realization that she's motherless.  Yes, her mother had died, but she had cared for Cheryl and nurtured her.  We all have different experiences in our lives in which mothers play a large role and again I felt there was a part that was missing. 

Overall, Wild is just that, wild.  I admired Cheryl's courage and tenacity in the face of adversity.  I couldn't shake the feeling however, that there's something important she didn't want to tell me.