The Girls: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship, by Nina Barrett (1998)
This is the non-fiction version of the genre I like so much, a genre the author refers to as "ensemble cast" women's fiction: a group of women and how their decisions affect their lives. The true stories are interspersed with anecdotes about women who were in the spotlight at the time: Princess Di, Lynda Bird Johnson, Patty Hearst, etc. Be sure to read the introduction even if you don't usually read introductions.
And let's watch our use of the word "lifelong": the friendship involved is among women in their 40s. Let's save this title for when they're at least elderly, and possibly dead.
Housewrights, by Art Corriveau (2002)
I'm not sure I caught the point of this book about a woman who marries one of a set of identical twins. Lily is only a child when she meets Oren and Ian, two motherless boys living nomadically with their housewright (homebuilder) father. After the boys help their father build Lily's house, ten years go by before she sees them again. Lily is in her late teens when Oren appears at her door out of the blue and proposes marriage. He builds a house for the two of them to live in, and gradually it dawns on her that he's assuming Ian will be living with them too. And so it comes to pass. The three of them live together companionably, playing their invented game of 3-way chess, learning to fiddle, cooking together in the kitchen. Lily is married to Oren and has only the occasional romantic feeling for Ian.
Things go on this way until one evening at a town dance, the twins and Lily dance together all at the same time. For some reason this shocks the town into making an assumption about the threesome's living arrangements, and they find themselves shunned. Lily's mother proposes a solution (marrying off Ian) that ends up tearing all three of them apart.
So there I am, reading along eagerly, waiting for reconciliation. I guess I had in mind that the three of them would end up back together again, since that was obviously what made them all happy. Did you see the movie As Good As It Gets? The clearly correct ending for that movie is that the characters played by Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, and Jack Nicholson would move in together with Helen Hunt's character's mother and child, and they'd all live together in their own platonic mix-matched family. Instead they force a romantic ending for Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson, despite a total lack of chemistry. We're left feeling as if we've seen the ending, but the ending isn't going to work. We want to know what will REALLY happen.
And so it is with this book. At the end I wasn't sure what the author was telling me. What is going to happen? Will they continue with their miserable existences, or will they fix it somehow? What about the baby---did I miss a possible paternity mix-up?
A terrific book with an excellent idea for a plot. But I don't get it.
I love it when the victims in a scary murder story are the people no one likes. I can't stomach it when someone's beloved spouse/parent/child is brutally killed, but if we're talking awful scary people being killed? I can take it.
When members of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list begin showing up murdered, America cheers on the killers as heroes. Detective Alex Brandon disagrees. And then clues begin pointing to a connection between the detective and the killers, so now he's even more involved. Alex teams up with one of the best "buddy groups" I've encountered in fiction: Kit Logan, an OCD millionaire with a traumatic past; Spooky, Kit's 13-year-old adopted daughter who steals and sets things on fire; John O'Brien, Alex's retired police force uncle; and Meghan, sister to one of the Ten Most Wanted and long-time friend of Kit's.
A thoroughly enjoyable murder mystery with excellent character development and a satisfying resolution. I would be thrilled if there were another book written using the same cast.
The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (2003)
This obviously autobiographical horror story of nannying in New York is a riveting read that rings truth from every page. But how can I recommend a story of such relentless awfulness? I recognize the people in these pages, and I don't want to be near them. Their every terrible word gets my adrenaline up, and there I am punching at shadows. I don't want a reminder that people like this exist. It's a great book; it's the world that's awful.
Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber, by Adele Lang (1998)
The key to the success of a book such as Bridget Jones's Diary is the lovably flawed character we can affectionately identify with. Take that away, and what is the point, exactly? It's a fake person, and in this case a one-dimensionally bitchy person, prattling on about nothing of interest. I suppose I should have been forewarned by the "sociopathic" in the title, but I assumed the main character would have SOME redeeming values, or at least that the book would be amusing. And what's with the "financial diary" premise? Unnecessary and ridiculous.