magikquilter October 1st, 2008
Daddy’s Girl by Lisa Scottoline brings us a new character in Philadelphia, the same city as Rosato and Associates and my favourite, Mary DiNunsio. While Rosato is mentioned she does not actually make an appearance in this book. I found this book to be a highly enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It was a quick read and one that was paced well. The characters were all interesting and varied.
Natalie is an associate Professor at a law school and is manipulated into helping another Professor teach a class at a local low security prison. While they are there a riot occurs and Natalie is caught up in the final moments of a prison officer’s life. His last words ” tell my wife it’s under the floor” lead Natalie into a complicated and dangerous world where she eventually herself is accused of murder. Natalie, who herself taught justice felt that she would not receive any and ran from the law.
The scene where she is being chased through the mall is priceless and Natalie has to think on her feet a lot throughout this misadventure. I also liked her younger brother Paul and the way Lisa had him SPEAKING IN CAPITOLS CAUSE THAT IS THE WAY HE TALKS! Her family dynamic is well written and creates a world which while privileged, is believable. I also liked the way the love story was handled …very tasteful and suitable for young adults as well.
The main thing which rankled with me was the way most of the men in the book were not exactly baddies but perhaps portrayed in a negative or maybe macho way in some respects. Her brothers, father and boyfriend were all sporty and hale and hearty and oblivious really to women, might explain why there were no girlfriends around! There was probably a literary reason for this, I just found it quite unflattering in it’s depiction of men while most of the women were fairly well depicted I thought. Am not sure if this is a common thread in her books, I also read a lot of Linda Fairstein and although she has strong women characters she does not have them like that at the expense of the male characters.
So all in all a fun read, not as good as I had hoped for but not bad either, the way Natalie resolved everything neatly at the end bothered me. I am thinking I like her previous books more …although kudos to Lisa for mixing it up and introducing different characters in her books. This way hopefully they will not go the way of Heronimous Bosch in the Michael Connelly novels.
3/5
Tags: book suitable for high school libraries, Daddy's Girl by Lisa Scottoline, thriller, woman's book, women characters
magikquilter September 3rd, 2008
Mary Wesley spins a tale here of two people in despair. Julia’s divorced husband and young son died after an appalling car accident while Sylvester’s ex-wife humiliated him and in fact as Julia later states, emasculated him. They are drawn together, almost as a comedy of errors. From the beginning where they are on a train together and Julia pulls the train stop cord to rescue a sheep in a field, their lives are drawn together.
The other characters are largely hugely flawed, the ex sectretary Rebecca is a frighteningly well depicted busybody who just will not see that she has no place in Sylvester’s life…that her role in it is effectively over. Sylvester’s increasingly brusque attempts to put her off are met with disbelief as she only sees and hears what she want to. The dead ex-husband and the ex-wife are both extremely unsympathetic characters as are so many around Julia. However the Patel’s more than make up for that. One cannot say that Mary Wesley shows men in a poor light, she is an equal opportunity basher of men and women although I do not feel that she despises people as is the impression some novelists give in these social comedies of manners.
This tale of grief and love with its accompanying themes of racism and domestic violence is told with such lashings of sagacious wit that one is left chuckling and marking the pages for future reference. I especially love the scene in Chapter Twenty Six where Sylvester finally gets Julia to cry on his shoulder and express her grief…meantime he starts to wonder what is on the answering machine, thinks about the minutia of his life. After all what do we say when someone is sobbing on one’s shoulder for what seems like forever. I also love that when they first heard of her baby’s death the Patel’s come over to her flat and as Mr Patel gets the curry ready Mrs Patel bathes Julia as lovingly as a mother…all without words. This is what I took away from this novel…we can harm each other so much with our words and yet we can heal so much with our silence….with our loving empathy……yet this takes time and in our increasingly time short lives we may be missing so much of what is going on around us. Hopefully we do not have to be in a state of despair to recognise it in another.
This is my second time of reading this book and I give it 4/5 ….read it in a few hours and highly recommend it.
Tags: Books, comedy of errors, grief, Mary Wesley An Imaginative Experience, sagacious wit, social commentary
magikquilter August 31st, 2008
Robert has anointed me Reader of the Week on his blog. Thanks Robert..am sure you did not know what you were letting yourself in for!
Tags: favourite books, interview, interview with magikquilter, my interview about reading, Reader of the week
magikquilter August 30th, 2008
The supplies I picked up while shopping and the tea today is with Sally, my friend from Flickr. She has been very helpful quilting wise and over a period of time has grown into a dear friend. We would love to have tea together one day but this will do until then as she lives in Oregon. Oh the trios are by Paragon and just divine…thrifted of course! That is the most vivid cobalt blue, it is almost the shade of the Laura Ashley fabric in the quilt. The other set has what looks like tiny forget-me-nots scattered over it.
Today I found another pile of books at our local library, five for one dollar!
Tags: Books, Library books, Paragon cups and saucers and plates, trios
magikquilter August 15th, 2008
A little peek into the cluttered mind and bedroom of a thrift and craftaholic. Am hoping the neatness inspires me to finish a lot of projects. The work area is getting to be almost as tidy as my new blog. Am somewhat baffled that nobody appears to have noticed the new look….perhaps everyone is reading it on their readers and not actually seeing it. Am thankful to my son and appreciate it even if nobody else notices anything different. And that brings me to a philosophical point …..maybe people who are so into reading the content do not really notice the actual format of a blog…have had incredible stats recently, even CJ said so. Along with that comes getting slammed I guess!
Tags: art books, design books, glass beads, new blog, quilting books, sewing notions, tidy work area, work area
magikquilter August 14th, 2008
This book by well known author Jodi Picoult was a slightly different take on her usual formulaic novels, although there were some similarities with The Green Mile by Stephen King which distracted me at times. The novel is ultimately about vengeance and redemption and coming after finishing Cage of Stars by Jacqueline Mitchard it was interesting reading, although not interesting enough for me to pull an all nighter.
Her research is impeccable for her novels and I have noticed she usually tries to draw attention to various topical issues, often more than one in the same book. This book dealt with not only the ethics surrounding the death penalty but associated things like restorative justice. Also the foster care system and the associated problems faced by people with learning and speech difficulties. She also covered Judaism and Catholicism and Agnosticism, Gnostic Gospels, faith and healing and miracles and the question of would we recognise the Messiah if He came to Earth now. Although it was never really explained how we would come to accept a Jewish or Christian Messiah who is a murderer.Then we have the heart transplant and the repercussions of living with an organ inside you that came from a murderer….do you think evil thoughts and can we live with such a person’s organ inside us? We even have a female Jewish ACLU lawyer with self esteem issues.
So this is clearly my problem with her books …. I am so distracted when I read her novels because she puts so much into them that I find my mind going off on tangents, and this is not helped by the constant platitudes and predictability of her novels. I did not buy this novel new and that is probably the best way I can describe her work for me. I would not pay full price or even half price for her books but I would get them out of the library as I do like to see what the current topical issue is for her. In fact these books may be in effect a sort of time capsule, we may look to these in twenty years and be amazed at how society has changed, so she may be some kind of genius after all.
I rate it 3/5
Tags: Agnosticism, Catholicism, Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult, death penalty, heart transplant, Jodi Picoult, Judaism, Messiah
