Some unsolicited thoughts and opinions from a mother and daughter who love reading and talking about books!

When you genuinely loved an author’s first novel, as I did Cutting for Stone, and you wait 14 years for a second novel, expectations can run high.  When I heard that Abraham Verghese had finally brought out his second novel, I immediately bought it and started to read.  At 715 pages, I had no misgivings about its length because I just knew it was going to be great.  Oprah had already chosen it for her bookclub!  Nearly three weeks later, I limped across the finish line and am still trying to figure out why.

I have never read a book by Barbara Kingsolver that I didn’t love, and Prodigal Summer is no exception. Published in 2000, somehow, I hadn’t read this one and was keen to explore whether early Kingsolver novels were as gorgeous as her recent books.  Prodigal Summer has an almost ineffable aura about it that I hope I can adequately describe.

When I think about Pineapple Street, it strikes me as the first fun summer book that I’ve read this year, albeit before summer has technically begun.  Set in Brooklyn Heights—and the first novel by Jenny Jackson, a Williams College graduate—the characters and storyline seem very familiar and realistic. 

This gorgeous story about four sisters and their relationships with each other, with their overbearing mother and their under-achieving father, is a modern-day recast of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  I am not sure that Hello Beautiful will stand the test of time to rival that classic in its staying power.  Nevertheless, I found it enthralling to read.

If ever there was a title for a book to make me less likely to pick it up and read it, I can’t come up with it!  Thankfully, Miss Benson’s Beetle was recently selected by my Boston Bates Alumna book club because it is a real jewel.  Joyce has written one of the best books about female friendship that I can remember ever reading.

How very fitting that this gorgeous novel about a lifelong friendship between two women should be recommended to me by my very dear friend, Pam.  The story begins when Agnes Lee and Polly Wister are in their 80s and navigating a new phase of their friendship at their summer homes on Fellowship Point, Maine. Agnes, a famous author who has never married, has plans to  donate her land on her beloved peninsula in Maine as a trust, to ensure that it will remain unspoiled after she dies.

I was drawn to Black Cake because it seemed everyone, everywhere was reading this debut novel.  The story begins with Byron and Bennie, brother and sister, who have been estranged for years, but who are thrust together to hear their mother Eleanor’s lawyer read them her will and last requests.