Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb. The book is being released by Liveright on August 24, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Sent to a “therapeutic community” for autism at the age of eleven, Todd Aaron, now in his fifties, is the “Old Fox” of Payton LivingCenter. A joyous man who rereads the encyclopedia compulsively, he is unnerved by the sudden arrivals of a menacing new staffer and a disruptive, brain-injured roommate. His equilibrium is further worsened by Martine, a one-eyed new resident who has romantic intentions and convinces him to go off his meds to feel “normal” again. Undone by these pressures, Todd attempts an escape to return “home” to his younger brother and to a childhood that now inhabits only his dreams. Written astonishingly in the first-person voice of an autistic, adult man, Best Boy―with its unforgettable portraits of Todd’s beloved mother, whose sweet voice still sings from the grave, and a staffer named Raykene, who says that Todd “reflects the beauty of His creation”―is a piercing, achingly funny, finally shattering novel no reader can ever forget.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Invisibles by Cecilia Galante
When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi
Love Maps by Eliza Factor

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle

Reviews posted this week:

The Invisibles by Cecilia Galante
When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Surfacing by Cormac James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Reinvention of Albert Paugh by Jean Davies Okimoto
Love Maps by Eliza Factor

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Invisibles by Cecilia Galante came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this one here.

Stepdog by Nicole Galland came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A woman, her dog, and the charming Irish actor she marries so he can get his green card come together in a dognapping plot that promises to be fun and heartwarming.

We That Are Left by Clare Clark came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

About two sisters whose lives and wishes are changed forever by the first World War and the man whose life has been entwined with theirs since childhood, this looks amazing!

The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield came from Gallery Books.

A story of letting go of anger and grief and building a new life after the loss of a child, I can't wait to dig into this one.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi

The news doesn't show us much about Afghanistan anymore. Other places and concerns have replaced this particular Middle Eastern country in the public consciousness. But many of the issues that brought it to the fore still exist. The Taliban, women's rights violations, extremism, and so forth haven't stopped. We've turned our attention elsewhere but people continue to suffer and Afghans still make the difficult and dangerous choice to flee their homeland in search of asylum elsewhere. The only times that the desperate plight of these refugees is brought to our attention is when a horrible tragedy happens, humanitarian groups shine an uncomfortable light on refugee camps, or a large protest or mass exodus occurs. Otherwise this ongoing crisis is conveniently and quietly ignored. Nadia Hashimi's latest novel, When the Moon Is Low, examines this crisis on a personal level with the tale of an Afghan mother who flees with her three children in tow to try and find a better life for them in London.

Fereiba grew up in Kabul with her father and stepmother, her own mother having died giving birth to her. Her stepmother favored her own children, using Fereiba to help her with housework and childcare, and Fereiba's father never intervened on her behalf in order to keep peace with his wife. Without the love and support that every child deserves, Fereiba had a solitary and sad childhood. Only after the unexpected love she finds in marriage does it look like her life is changing for the better. She and her husband live a comfortable life, she works as a teacher, and they start a family. But when the Taliban arrive, everything is thrown into chaos and Fereiba must learn to live with fear and haunting tragedy. Following the plan her husband set in motion, she makes the difficult and dangerous choice to leave Kabul with her children to try and make their way to her sister in London. Traveling on forged documents, the journey is arduous and exacting. As a mother, Fereiba must watch as her oldest son, Saleem, struggles to become a man without a father and before his time and as her youngest son, a medically fragile infant, suffers and weakens. The small family faces indignities and hardship that they have no choice but to endure and accept as they make their way through an unwelcoming and sometimes hostile Europe. But when Saleem is caught by police without papers, separated from the family, and deported, the blow is horrible. The only option is for Fereiba to go on with the other two children and for Saleem to make his own way.

The story of their flight is emotionally wrenching. Their strength and determination in the face of so many obstacles, including racism and suspicion towards those seeking asylum, is impressive. They do find kind and helpful people to help them along the way so they can maintain hope even in the darkest of times. Hashimi has drawn vivid pictures of the squalor in which refugees live, their desperation and sometime solidarity, and has captured the ever present nagging fear of the displaced extremely well, especially in the character of Saleem. The novel does have a bit of a split personality feeling to it after spending so much time on Fereiba's childhood and courtship and then jumping almost straight into their refugee life with just a tiny bridge over her many years of happiness with Mahmood, her husband and soulmate. The early story is told by Fereiba in the first person while sections focused on Saleem, told in the third person, take precedence in the second half of the novel, although Fereiba continues to narrate the occasional chapter as well. This is an ingenious way to show their experiences as two different faces of the refugee crisis. The story is a compelling and fast read which highlights the continued human cost of oppression and intolerance on a very personal level.

For more information about Nadia Hashimi and the book, check out her website, like her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Review: The Invisibles by Cecilia Galante

There is a home for boys not far from my mom and dad's house. It is a large brick building set well back from the road.  brick pillarA stately arch flanks the driveway and live oaks draped with Spanish moss give the whole place a bit of a gothic feel to it as you drive past it. I never lived in the house that my parents live in now so I only know the small amounts I've gleaned about the house itself and nothing really at all about the inhabitants. How old they are, where they go to school, the circumstances that led to them living in this home, all of these things are a mystery. In fact, I can't begin to imagine the lives these boys lead and what is in their hearts. But Cecilia Galante, in her first book for adults, The Invisibles, has imagined something similar: the lives of four girls who met in a girls' home as teenagers, their lives then, the pasts that shaped them, and their lives as adults.

Nora is a librarian who collects first lines from books. Her dog is named Alice Walker and is the most important thing in her life. She's a loner who rarely lets people into her life. But on her birthday, she gets a phone call from the past. As a teenager, Nora had lived in Turning Winds, the local home for girls, and was a part of a group of four girls who dubbed themselves The Invisibles. When Ozzie calls her that morning, they haven't been in touch for fifteen years, not after something terrible happened and they all went their separate ways. Now Grace, another of their group, has tried to commit suicide and is asking for them all. They were once each other's family and she needs them. With misgivings galore, Nora, who has generally barricaded herself off from everyone since the demise of the Invisibles, agrees to go with Ozzie and Monica to spend a weekend with Grace to see if there's anything they can do to help.

Each of the four women has a trauma in her background, one terrible enough to have landed her in the girls' home and in each case, their pasts are still influencing their presents. Bigger even than that though, is the shame over circumstances they could not control that still causes each woman to keep quiet about her own personal unhappiness, tragedy, fear, etc. As the women start to reconnect, not only do their barriers start to come down and their secrets start to emerge, but their shared past slowly comes to light. The emotional scars of the past are connected with the unresolved issues of the present as the mystery of everything that happened that seminal night is slowly revealed.

Nora is the main focus of the story but Ozzie, Grace, and Monica's stories are all told in their turn as well. Their pasts are both similar and wildly different. All of them were failed somehow by their mothers and they have struggled with their personal worth as a result. That each of the characters has something so terrible in her past is understandable given where they initially met each other but sometimes the novel feels as if one more problem might sink it. The tone of the conversations between these long estranged friends who once meant the world to each other quickly reverts back to the intimate confessions they once shared, highlighting their past connection as each others' teeenaged lifeline. But the problems of the women are definitely adult problems no matter how rooted they are in childhood and adolescence. The inclusion of the rituals of the club sharing their wishes and dreams is a nice touch and makes what they've endured more personal and human. The early pacing is a bit slow but it is hurtling along by the end as the reader wants to hear the truth of everything from that last night. A novel of friendship and the family we create, this will make you question how much of our pasts, good and bad, define us.

For more information about Cecilia Galante and the book, check out her website, like her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner. The book is being released by Atria on August 11, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: An unforgettable story about true love, real life, and second chances…

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are just eight years old when they meet one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she’s intrigued by the boy who shows up alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy’s taken back to a doctor and Rachel’s sent back to her bed, they think they’ll never see each other again.

Rachel grows up in an affluent Florida suburb, the popular and protected daughter of two doting parents. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent for running.

Yet, over the next three decades, Andy and Rachel will meet again and again—linked by chance, history, and the memory of the first time they met, a night that changed the course of both of their lives.

A sweeping, warmhearted, and intimate tale, Who Do You Love is an extraordinary novel about the passage of time, the way people change and change each other, and how the measure of a life is who you love.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I've been in paradise lately. But paradise has a very intermittent and dicey internet connection so I've gotten much more reading than reviewing accomplished in the past month. This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Reinvention of Albert Paugh by Jean Davies Okimoto

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Love Maps by Eliza Factor Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Reviews posted this week:

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Surfacing by Cormac James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Reinvention of Albert Paugh by Jean Davies Okimoto