I found this book to be an easy and pleasant read. I did not find it gripping, but I did enjoy seeing a BBC comedy television show through the eyes of actors, writer, and producer, even if fictional. This book also was a nice period piece and gave a good feel for Britain in the 1960s.

This book was a departure in style for my book group. We all agreed it had to be read with a grain of salt/suspension of disbelief and be taken for what it is. This is not a literary masterpiece. We did not find much to discuss in this book, other than how graphic, violent, and gory it was.

Reading this book was like playing a video game. The main character ventured away from reality and into a different "realm". He faced many challenges that needed to be cleverly beaten and overcome. When he did that there were rewards, rest time, and a collection of items to be used for the next challenge.

Like many studies suggest happens with violent video games, each challenge was more graphic and lasted longer, but as a reader, I felt you became more desensitized to it and just accepted it as the norm. I also felt like I was on the path with the main character and felt myself wondering "Where are we going", "Where is this leading?", and "Will it be worth it in the end?" Sadly, I felt the answer to that last question was no.

As a club, it was good to be pushed out of our comfort zone and read something completely different. I just wish it has been a better book. I would not recommend this to other book clubs or friends.

I was very interested to read Hillbilly Elegy as my father and many of his ancestors were born and raised in SW Virginia in the Appalachian mountains. I have not spent much time down there but am very interested in cultural history and ancestry. As such, I thought this would be an interesting read.

After reading it, I believe Hillbilly Elegy will not be an easy read for anyone from a marginally functional family. There are many moments/scenes in this memoir that a reader will find shocking, appalling, criminal, and leave you with a WTF sense of disbelief and anger. IMHO, those are the readers that really need to read this book. Working through those moments in order to gain a better understanding of what is behind them is exactly what I think the author intended. I think Vance hopes to foster a stronger understanding and conversation between culturally different (vastly different) groups of people.

While many of the moments in this book are horrifying, the author writes about it as "par for the course" and normal from his point of view and people. He acknowledges that it is different and in many cases needs to change but he also finds good, love, and pride in many of the moments of his youth. It is all part of who he is, where he is from, and part of what created the man he is today. Vance is very open and honest about this in his book. It is this attitude of acceptance, understanding, forgiving, and yes accountability that made this book so appealing to me. Without hearing voices like Vance's and understanding his perspective, real and useful progress/change is not possible.

I believe this book is a great read in helping people start to gain an understanding and at least have a conversation about a life-story, culture, and belief system that is foreign to many. His experience focuses on the working-class/lower income and poor white families of the Appalachian area, particularly in parts of Kentucky and Ohio. In today's society, I believe there is a rather divisive sense of us versus them mentality amongst many groups of people (race, class, religion, etc.). I think that can only start to be overcome with listening, trying to understand another person's reality, being non-judgemental about it, and having conversations. I believe Vance's book is a wonderful place to start this much-needed process with regards to the poor and working-class/lower income whites of this area.

I read Alif as the monthly selection for my book club. The main character, Alif, summarizes the book nicely when he says "A girl he loved had decided that she did not love hime - at least not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books and computer surveillance and recourse to the jinn." He later describes his situation as "I was a computer geek with girl issues. That sounds pretty ordinary to me." This story is anything but ordinary. I found it to be a fun, adventurous, and enjoyable read. It can be read for pure entertainment, but, it also has content for deeper investigations and conversations. The author combines classic computer geek culture, modern day socio-political themes, religion, and the supernatural into a fantasy thriller style novel. For me, she was successful, and this was a classic good versus evil story.

Wilson includes quite a bit of tension between the unseen/hidden/belief and the seen/known/reality, as well as between the supernatural and "real" world. The unseen is manifested in many ways throughout the story including the computer aliases that protect and shield the gray-hat hacktivists, the traditional clothing of veils and robes worn by many characters, the unknown state censors, and most importantly to the story, the world of jinns. As the book progresses, that which is hidden and unseen becomes seen and known. This is especially true for many of the characters in the novel. At first, I found Alif to be a rather pathetic main character who lacked courage and whose whining/pining was irritating. However, as Dina so eloquently says to him "I was annoyed with the boy you were, I liked the man I knew you would become." This was also true for me. At the end, I felt I understood and like Alif as he grew and changed. Dina also becomes better known to both Alif and the reader. I truly liked her character. She is a character of piety, devotion, gentleness, and contentedness who chooses to wear veils. Yet none of that keeps her from being a "bad-ass" who can quickly cut to the chase with both her words and actions. Her perceptions, understanding, and believe in and about the supernatural and reality are insightfully keen. Dina truly knows and sees herself, it is up to the reader and Alif to move her from unseen to known. Other characters change and reveal their true selves throughout the story including Intisar, The Hand, NewQuarter, Azalel, and many other of the Jinn.

The story also explores the ideas of the role and importance of religion in society and compares and contrasts it to more ancient supernatural fantasies. I particularly liked when the conversation between Alif and the Sheikh as they were discussing the morality of actions conducted in virtual space. The conversation ends with the quotation, "If a video game does more to fulfill a young person than the words of prophecy, it means people like me (the Sheikh) have failed in a rather spectacular fashion." This was followed by Alif saying "You're not a failure ... It's only that we don't feel safe. A game has a reset button. You have infinite chances for success. Real life is awfully permanent compared to that,". Definitely interesting food for thought. In many places, the novel seems to try and blend mysticism and spirituality. I enjoyed the parallel tracks of have a man of religion along with a jinn.

Other topics that are given a lot of attention are knowledge and freedom. The novel is about the flow of knowledge and stresses coded knowledge heavily. There is the issue of censorship and who can and should control knowledge. The grey-hats try to make all (even morally questionable) content free and available while The Hand works consistently to shut it down. The grey-hats are working for a revolution based on the free exchange of knowledge. There is also the idea of knowledge as power and danger. The central book in the novel, The Alf Yeom, is desperately sought after in order to gain power and knowledge of the ages. The Hand firmly believes he who is knowledgeable enough to read and understand the Alf Yeom and has the powerful means to exploit it will ultimately be the winner. There is also forgotten knowledge and here is where the world of jinns comes heavily into play. As the names of the jinn and their history is forgotten by man, they become less known, seen, and believed. Throughout this novel, the reader gets to explore Wilson's vision of the jinn world. It is very a very enjoyable tour. Additionally, knowledge as changeable is explored, especially with regards to the meaning of words and what knowledge is lost in translation between languages. One character states "There was the Quran, which shattered language and put it back together again in a way no one had been able to replicate, using words whose meanings evolved over time without the alteration of a single dot or brushstroke." Metaphors are described in the novel as “knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction.” Lastly, there is the issue of how does one know? Is it by seeing or is faith enough? One character says "that man's innovation is entirely known to God; it means there is no such thing as fiction." and another character says "every innovation started out as fantasy."

This is a well written and intriguing book. Except for stopping to research the meaning of unfamiliar words (the author has included a glossary in the back), this is an easy and quick read. They pace really picks up once Vikram the Vampire is introduced. They ending is a bit contrived and too neatly packaged for my taste, but the substance and enjoyment in between is worth it.

This is the first novel by Stephen King that I have read. I enjoyed this one as a book on tape. I am not a fan of horror stories, monsters, or heavy science fiction. However, 11/22/63 was none of these. The only science fiction aspect of this novel is the time travel and even that is not treated in detail until the very end of the novel. King’s approach to time travel is thoughtful and interesting. The only (nonhuman) monster in the story is “the past” in that it violently does not want to be changed and will fight back when one attempts to change it. The novel focuses a lot on the ideas of “the past is obdurate”, “the past harmonizes”, and the butterfly effect.

While the story is billed as “what if JFK was not assassinated”, I felt it was more about the life of Jake/George. The assassination, and trying to prevent it, is the motivation for the main character and the impetus to the action, it is merely a sideline. There is only a brief, but intriguing and thought provoking, speculation about life if JFK had survived. The majority of the novel focuses on the life of Jake in present day Maine, the life of George in the 50s/60s, and how changes made in the past impact the future.

My husband also listened to this novel with me. He felt it was overly long and could have been edited down by half. However, I appreciated the length and understood it to be needed for the following reasons:
***All of the characters involved in the JKF assassination, as well as the circumstances of their lives and motivation are well-researched and developed in this novel. As I was not alive during this time, I appreciated that level of detail and scene setting. It was informative and interesting to me. I am not sure if that would be true of someone who had lived through the actual assassination and absorbed the details of it first hand. In fact, they might find it tedious.
***The length was used to help the reader “time travel” to the late 50s - early 60s. Although I was not alive during this time period, through his level of detail and storytelling, King transported me to this time period. He made me nostalgic for an older and simpler time. As a teacher, I particularly appreciated the portrayal of high school life in small town Texas in the early 1960s. I loved the juxtaposition between the time periods of “Ago” and “Ahead” that King was able to so thoroughly develop with his length.
***Through the length and meticulous details provided, I got to know Jake/George. He and other main characters in the novel became real and even friends. The characters were fully developed, three dimensional people. King delved into the minutia of every person, city, and situation. There were a lot of characters and sometimes it became a challenge to keep track of them all, but this level of detail provided a richness and fullness to the story that I liked.

Adjectives that I would use to describe this book include: romantic, suspenseful, adventurous, emotional depth, strong imagery, and intense. I highly recommend this book.

I am a fan of Kent Haruf’s novels, particularly the Plainsong series set in Holt Colorado. This novel had escaped my attention until I saw a preview for the movie that will be based upon it. I was excited to see Jane Fonda and Robert Redford starring in the movie and thought - this is a must read before seeing the movie.

I was not disappointed. The book is written in a conversational style without quotation marks or attribution. At times I found it difficult to determine who was speaking. However, it is definitely worth the effort. The story focuses on the later stages of a widow’s and widower’s lives and how they meet their needs, particularly loneliness, versus the opinions, judgments, and expectations of their adult children and the town people. Haruf’s characters are treated with his typical gentle kindness and insight. I found Our Souls At Night to be a quiet, comforting, and touching story. I enjoyed the presentation of the simple things in life and the companionship/experiences of a couple during their golden years.

I was surprised by the ending of the story. The decisions made by Addie felt out of character to me and were disappointing. I could understand them, and perhaps they were realistic, but I definitely did not like them. The end came quickly, felt rushed compared to the first half of the book, and ultimately made me sad. However, even with the ending, I found this to be a delightful and beautiful story filled with wisdom and love. It is one I will reflect on for a while and recommend to others. I was sorry to find out that this is also Haruf’s last novel, but it does seem somehow fitting. After reading this, I can’t wait to see the movie adaptation of this book.

When Breath Becomes Air is the story of Paul Kalanithi, a doctor on the verge of finishing his neurosurgeon training, who is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. For me, the book read like a three-strand braid. The first strand was a biography of Paul starting when he was a teenager trying to discover his calling and concluding with his death. The second strand was Paul’s reflections on being a doctor and the doctor-patient relationship. The third was his philosophical quest for an understanding of what makes life meaningful and an accounting of human meaning in connection with the brain.
I enjoyed his accounting of life as a medical student and doctor in training the most. His perspective on being a doctor and his efforts to ensure that patients were viewed as people, not problems on a to-do list, were particularly revealing and insightful to me. I found his shift from being the doctor to being the patient to be profound and impactful. As one who is also suffering an illness (thankfully not as severe as Paul’s), I connected with his thoughts on and confusion about time and the future.
Through his biographical strand, I came to know Paul and mourned his death with tears of my own. Reading about his courage and dignity in the face of his own mortality was admirable. Paul’s attitude and approach to death was refreshing. His wife Lucy summarized this well in the Epilogue by stating, “Paul’s decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude we don’t celebrate enough in our death-avoidant culture.”
It was his philosophical quest that I struggled with the most. He described his search for meaning based upon his reading, education, learning, training, and life. His understanding evolved with each new experience and I felt that he wrote his reflections in this same evolutionary manner. Not having had the same experiences as him, I found his revelations vague, unconnected, and lacking in clarity. I understand that Paul wrote this book under extreme time pressure and against extraordinary circumstances. I also understand that it is in essence an unfinished manuscript, however, this aspect of the story felt tedious and left me a bit bored.
I am not sure if and to whom I would recommend this book. I would not give it as an “off-the cuff” recommendation to everyone. Instead, it would be a discussion with someone on how they heard of it, why they wanted to read it, and what they hoped to gain from it that would guide my recommendation or not.

“I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

My Name Is Lucy Barton tells the story of a woman, named Lucy, as she recovers from an illness and tries to make sense of/peace with her complicated relationship with her mother. Lucy was raised in extreme poverty by parents who were not able to nurture and show her love in the manner that most children need. These circumstances have a fundamental and lasting impact on Lucy’s understanding of people, including herself, her choices, and the woman she is.

The novel is written from Lucy’s point of view and comes across as a mix of a diary, vignettes of events, puzzles with half-revealed truths, but mostly, her own “one true story”. Strout uses language sparsely and with restraint. The novel is a short 191 pages that can be read quickly but should be savored slowly. The details are minimal and pared down to only the essentials. However, those pages resonate with a profusion of intense emotion and the vulnerability of the human condition. Loneliness, longing, pain, and inferiority are all felt strongly throughout the novel but so are resilience and love. At one point Lucy says “I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now”. Strout filled this novel with true sentences. The novel summarizes itself nicely with the quotation “This is a story about love, … This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly.” I highly recommend this novel and suspect that Lucy will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

My husband and I listened to Paulette Jiles’s News of the World as an audiobook. Set in the late 19th century, the novel develops the relationship between a 10-year girl rescued from the Kiowa Indians and the retired 71-year old Captain who agrees to escort her across Texas to reunite her with her aunt and uncle. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a widower, father, and veteran of two wars who now makes his living traveling across Texas holding news-reading events for small towns. The Indians kidnapped Johanna after their raid killed her parents. She spent many years being raised by the Kiowa until they sold her back to the American military. Johanna is no longer wanted by the Indians but does not recall her native German-American life, language, or the “proper, civilized” behavior for females.

This is a historical western filled with numerous facts and events from the time period, both local and global ones, as well as vignettes of life in the still rather untamed Texas. It is also an intergenerational novel that focuses on themes of family, trust, moral obligations, and friendship. The Captain and Johanna form a unique and special bond. It is a real pleasure to witness the growth of their companionship and love. The Captain is an extremely wise older gentleman who has a penchant for straight talking and telling it like it is. I love that his character is so matter-of-fact about everything, down to earth, and holds the highest level of integrity. Johanna is a real spitfire. She is courageous in the face of great fear and uncertainty, as well as a very practical traveling companion. She is a perfect match for the Captain. Their free-spirited and wandering natures truly connect them. I loved the characters of both the Captain and Johanna.

Jiles has a talent for description and scene setting. The facts and research included in the story are not superfluous; they enhance the story and enrich the scenes. She makes the reader feel truly present and one can smell the smells, feel the dust and heat, and experience the fears, frustrations, and triumphs. The novel reads at a pace that matches traveling four hundred miles across Texas in a horse-drawn wagon. While that is slow, it is fitting and appropriate for the novel. There are also a number of adventures and quite a bit of dry humor along the way. The writing is lush and lyrical which draws the reader into the journey and makes you want to stay until the end. Both my husband and I enjoyed this book.

Told from the housekeeper’s perspective, this novel starts with the introduction of a brilliant math professor to his new housekeeper. Due to an accident, the professor’s memories reset every eighty minutes. When we meet him, he is covered in sticky notes that remind him of who people are and where he has placed things. He has been through a number of other housekeepers already and is considered difficult. The housekeeper, a single mother, has a ten-year-old son who the professor names Root, as the hair on the top of his head reminds the professor of a square root symbol. Except for the nickname Root, these characters remain nameless. The novel focuses on the interactions between these three characters.

I found the math tidbits, like amicable numbers, shared by the professor to be interesting. I was not aware of many of them, so that was a plus and I used those facts to initiate conversations with my husband who was also a math major. The professor’s mind for numbers never failed him (even as his memory for other things did) and when forced to, this is the way he interacts with those around him and the world. The housekeeper, while insecure about her knowledge of even basic math, is intrigued by the math questions/beauty that the professor presents. She is unafraid of a challenge and is determined to apply herself and do her best in all situations.

The novel’s main theme revolves around family, especially the unlikely ways in which we create our own family. The professor was portrayed as the consummate professor – patient, inspiring, questioning, encouraging, and challenging to both Root and the housekeeper. His relationship with Root was tender and charming, as he became a surrogate grandfather to him. The housekeeper becomes more than a housekeeper as she is the professor’s main caretaker. The three of them create an unconventional family with their own rhythms and traditions.

With this being an intergenerational relationship novel about a brilliant math teacher plus the intriguing memory premise, it should have been a home run for me. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Despite its certain strengths, I did not like this story. The pace was too slow, the relationships were too sweet and even the tragic circumstances surrounding the characters could not mitigate that. Even though the novel was set in modern day Japan, I did not get a sense of the culture or place. The novel could have been set in Middle-America and not lost or gained anything. Ultimately, I was disappointed by this novel and would not recommend it to others.

"He supposes a great many ills of adults might be cured by a nap or a good meal or a bit of timely reassurance. But adults complicate everything. By nature they are complicators. They learned to make things harder than they need to be and they learned to talk way too much." - Arthur Truluv

"Why do they pick on her? ... What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close." - Maddy

"Oh Arthur, no one even sees you when you get old except people who knew you when you were young." - Lucille

This was a lovely little intergenerational gem of a story exploring "What makes a family"? Arthur Moses is a widower who meets 18-year Maddy while visiting his wife's grave. Arthur is the embodiment of a perfect "grandfather". He is steadfast, loyal, wise, and caring. Maddy nicknames him Truluv due to those characteristics. Maddy is a lonely misunderstood teenager. She has had a rough life and is just craving love and acceptance. Lucille, Arthur's next door neighbor, is a real character. She provides humor, contrast, and a counterpoint to Arthur's character. As Lucille advances towards the end of her life, she realizes that she has not really lived and starts to change this. Through their own circumstances and in their own way, Maddy, Arthur, and Lucille come together to create a "family" of their own.

This is a sentimental story that would make a wonderful Hallmark movie. Readers who enjoyed A Man Named Ove will like this story. I only wish the author had provided recipes for all of the mouthwatering treats mentioned in the novel.

“Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core.”

“In nature – out yonder where the crawdads sing – some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive – way back yonder.”

Wow, just wow – I loved this novel. Survival, nature, poetry, coming of age, mystery, prejudice, and isolation are all explored in this story. The main character, Kya, grows up isolated in the coastal marshes of North Carolina where she must learn to take care of herself, trust, and come of age amongst gulls, fireflies, and shells. Intermixed with Kya’s story is the mystery surrounding the death of the local town’s notable young man.

This is Owens’ debut novel. She is a wildlife scientist whose previous published works involved extensive nature writing. I felt that nature, in particular, the coastal marsh, was its own character in this novel. Kya observed the creatures around her and used them to learn about life, love, and human behavior. Along with her, I learned quite a bit about the lives and mating cycles of many of the marsh insects and animals. The author’s lyrical prose evoked a very real sense of time and place. Nature poetry also features prominently in this novel. At one point, Kya states that “some words hold a lot” and this is especially true of the poems highlighted throughout the story. Kya used these poems to help her understand people and situations and to process her emotions.

What does it mean to be a good person? What makes a good man or a good woman? These topics are explored and developed in detail throughout this novel. In particular, the end of the story leaves the reader to ponder this. Most of the locals in this novel act out stereotypical small-town prejudices, apropos of the time. The “March Girl”, as they called Kya, was different. She was poor, raised in a swamp, and therefore less than them. She was seen as an object of ridicule and a dirty person who was to be feared and avoided. At one critical point in the novel, the townspeople are called to task and asked: “did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her?” However, a few of the locals rise above these biases. The story contrasts these people including two young men with whom Kya interacts. It also contrasts the parents of the two young men, as well as Kya’s biological parents with her “adopted” parents. Are the differences clear-cut good versus bad? What motivates people to do what they do? Are their choices and behavior biological or learned? There is a lot of room for discussion of these topics.

This story will stay with me for a long time to come. I look forward to reading more from this author.

“ I am Cuban, and yet, I am not. I don’t know where I fit here, in the land of my grandparents, attempting to recreate a Cuba that no longer exists in reality. Perhaps we’re the dreamers in all of this; the hopeful ones. Dreaming of a Cuba we cannot see with our eyes, that we cannot touch, whose taste lingers on our palates, with the tang of memory.”

“I walk down these streets, and I look out to sea, and I want to feel as though I belong here, but I am a visitor here, a guest in my own country… then you know what it means to be Cuban … we always reach for something beyond our grasp.”

This story revolved around Marisol Ferraro and her grandmother, Elisa Perez. As the book begins, Elisa had just passed and in her will, she requested that Marisol disperse her cremated remains back in her beloved home of Cuba. As a wealthy, influential family that supported Batista, the Perez family chose to flee Cuba as Castro rose to power. Elisa was a privileged young woman with great hopes that they would soon be able to return home. However, she spent the remainder of her life in Miami regaling her children and grandchildren with tales of her love for Cuba. “Next year in Havana” is a toast that the family never stopped saying because the dream of returning never came true. The novel tells the parallel stories of Elisa’s last year in Cuba and Marisol’s visit to Cuba. Both women, decades apart, face complicated love stories with ardent revolutionaries and live in perilous political climates that ultimately force them to face what it means to be Cuban. Can one “be of a place” without being “from the place”?

Cleeton allows Cuba to shine and be a star character in this novel. She captures and shares its beauty, people, history, customs, fortunes, and misfortunes with great care and devotion. She displays a real passion for Cuba and contrasts the dream of “old Cuba” with the reality of current Cuba. During both decades, the characters dream for a better future and hope to stop being guests in their own country. As a reader, I learned quite a bit about the past and present political climates of Cuba. My one complaint about the novel was that at times it felt too much like a political lecture about Cuba. I suspect the author’s intent with this was to show how important political forces were and are to the Cuban people in terms of shaping their lives and country.

Next Year in Havana was an interesting book and definitely worth the read. It was a love story, on multiple levels, combined with a history and politics lesson. It makes the reader both feel and think. Cleeton has another novel about the Perez family coming out in April 2019 titled When We Left Cuba. It follows Elisa’s older sister, Beatriz. I look forward to continuing to read about the family and, of course, Cuba.

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted.”

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night …”

At first, Eleanor Oliphant seemed to be similar to The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion in that the story focused on a socially awkward person seeking love. However, it was so much more than that and very definitely worth the read.
This novel focused on the themes of loneliness, particularly in the younger generation, social awkwardness, acceptance from others and of oneself, healing, and taking healthy risks. Prior to the start of the novel, Eleanor Oliphant had a horrific childhood and difficult adolescence. She was still dealing with those implications and fallout when the novel began.

This story is dark, funny, and ultimately endearing. Eleanor is a complex, deep, and well-crafted character. The traumatic events that happened to her, how she internalized them, and people’s reactions to her were dark and difficult to read. However, Eleanor is a plucky character and her actions, opinions, and how she faced the world made me laugh out loud numerous times throughout the story. I can’t imagine finishing this book and not loving Eleanor. She is a very unusual protagonist!

I wish this novel had been a book club read for me, as there is so much fodder for discussion here. I particularly liked how multi-layered the title of this novel was. There are so many ways to interpret it in light of the story. I loved Eleanor’s observations about life, particularly about what it takes to socially fit-in and how that is so different between men and women. The way Eleanor gradually opens up to other people and life itself was also fascinating. I highly recommend this book and was very glad I read it.

I loved this book! Don't let the cemetery, deaths, and adultery put you off from this book. This is a book about life and love in all of its forms. It is a sensual book in that it fills your senses completely - you see the scenery, you feel the ocean, you taste the fresh simple food, you hear the music (there is even a Spotify playlist of the songs mentioned), and it touches your heart with the full range of emotions. It is a book of contradictions - there is death but there is life and new growth, there is hurt but there is healing, there is hate but also love, there is loneliness but also close friendships, and there are tears but also laughter.

This is a book that is meant to be savored. It will move you. The main character reads a journal throughout the novel and her thoughts when she finishes it sum up how I feel about this book: "I close Irene's journal with a heavy heart. The way one closes a novel one has fallen in love with. A novel that's a friend from whom it's hard to part, because one wants it close by, in arm's reach."