book reviews- Darren
Audrey Niffenegger-the time traveller's wifeWhat do you do when you meet the love of your life when you're six years old? And he's 36, but he's really only eight years older than you are?
Henry DeTamble is a time traveler, although not by choice. A genetic mutation causes him to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view, leaving behind his clothes and possessions, and arriving naked in another time and another place. For the most part, this is a curse. Henry often has to turn to petty crime to feed and clothe himself when he travels, and must run from people, thugs, or the police. Eventually Henry returns to his present time, bringing only the bodily injuries he's suffered back with him. Sometimes he travels back in time and visits an earlier version of himself. One of the places to which he travels often is the meadow behind Clare's house, and throughout her younger years, Clare meets him there and falls in love with him.
This is the basic outline for the story of Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger's remarkable debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife. This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives. Ms. Niffenegger has thought through all the ramifications of the time travel, and sewn it seamlessly into the storyline. Once you accept that time traveling is a part of Henry's life he can't control, nothing that happens to him seems farfetched or out of character.
Maeve binchy-echoes
Echoes is set in the fictional seaside town of Castlebay, where Clare O’Brien — yes, that’s two Clares in one week — struggles to make her family understand why she wants a better life than one resigned to running a shabby grocery store. Her only way out is via studying and scholarships, so after years of hard work and the aid of her progressive schoolteacher, Clare escapes to university in Dublin. There she reconnects with a childhood acquaintance, and soon falls in love. Trouble is, he’s the son of the town doctor, and his snobbish mother has never liked Clare; she likes our heroine even less once she gets pregnant. This being both Ireland and the 1950s, Clare and the doctor’s son marry, which leads to even more troubles, the least of which is post-partum depression and infedility.
Gary D. Schmidt- the wednesday wars
A humorous book that follows Holling Hoodhood, seventh grader and future architect/owner of Hoodhood and Associates, as he passes Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, because he is the only Presbyterian student. The rest of the class is attending religious services, either Jewish or Christian, and so Holling gets off on the wrong foot with Mrs. Baker from day one. But through their interactions, revolving around manual labor at first, then Shakespeare, and finally baseball, Holling and Mrs. Baker come to know and understand each other better.The book is funny, especially at the outset, but the tone is often inconsistent. Sometimes it was a very believable seventh grader and sometimes it was clearly the author speaking.
tess gerritsen-the apprentice
It’s a boiling summer in Boston. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes that end in abduction and death. The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently thrown behind bars. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires.
At least that’s what detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her – literally and figuratively – she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence. Rizzoli isn’t counting on becoming a target herself. Yet once Hoyt is suddenly free, he joins his mysterious brother in a vicious vendetta.
I love the character of Jane Rizzoli. She’s a good cop, intelligent and insightful, who’s almost buried in a male-dominated hierarchy. Her need to impress her colleagues and earn the social distinction of “equal” is compelling. I’ve known women like Rizzoli who struggled to survive in those kinds of worlds, for exactly the same reasons.
I also love the way Rizzoli fits into her family. Everyone there seems to dismiss her job as a homicide detective, even after she was nearly killed bringing in Hoyt. Despite Rizzoli’s hard-as-nails exterior, the author shows how vulnerable her lead character is on the job, with her family, and when she’s by herself. Rizzoli is a fully realised personality, equipped with strengths, weaknesses, and the seeds for her own potential self-destruction.
Tess gerritsen-Vanish
A nameless, beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. An apparent suicide, she lies on a gurney awaiting the dissecting scalpel of medical examiner Maura Isles. But when Maura unzips the body bag and looks down as the body, she gets the fright of her life. The corpse opens it eyes.
Very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where, with shockingly cool precision, she murders a security guard and seizes hostages…one of them a pregnant patient, Jane Rizzoli.
Who is this violent, desperate soul, and what does she want? As the tense hours tick by, Maura joins forces with Jane’s husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, to track down the mysterious killer’s identity. When federal agents suddenly appear on the scene, Maura and Gabriel realize that they are dealing with a case that goes far deeper than just an ordinary hostage crisis.
Only Jane, trapped with the armed madwoman, holds the key to the mystery. And only she can solve it, if she survives the night.
Enjoy~
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