Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

If you ask me which words come into my mind first whenever I think of this book, my answer will be: nasty, dark, twisted, disturbing.

In this rather traumatizing psychological thriller Camille Preaker, a troubled newspaper reporter, is sent to her home town to get the inside scoop on the murders of two preteen girls - both were strangled and had their teeth removed. As I follow Camille on her quest to obtain as much information as possible about the crimes, I learn much more than I bargained for. The small town of Wind Gap, in the fashion of Twin Peaks, is filled to the brim with dark secrets, and not the least of them is the twisted dynamics in Camille's own family...

For me the most remarkable aspect of this book is that Gillian Flynn succeeds in creating a novel of main characters which are nasty women. I am so used to books where women are victims and all evil is committed by bad, bad men. Not so in Sharp Objects. Women of Wind Gap are both victims and perpetrators, they are promiscuous and abusive, self-destructive and violent. Men are only fixtures in their lives and pawns in their sick games. If anything, this is a refreshing twist on the old tired genre of murder mystery.

I liked the psychological aspect of this novel as well. Flynn skillfully portrays how differently people react to the abuse in their lives - some direct the pain onto themselves, some inflict it on others - and both are equally damaging to one's psyche.

I definitely wouldn't recommend Sharp Objects to squeamish. There is a lot of disturbing stuff in this book - promiscuous young girls, self-mutilation, sexual abuse, drugs. This is not a comfort read by any means. However I found it fascinating (in a I-can't-stop-watching-this-train-wreck way) and hard to put down. I will certainly read Flynn's other novel - Dark Places. Well, as soon as I psychologically recover from Sharp Objects.

The Light of Evening by Edna O'Brien

This book held my interest initially when the mother, Dilly, is a young girl and travels against her parents' wishes to America. The descriptions of what life was like for a young domestic were illuminating and offered interesting food for thought on the class structure (Irish emigrees still subjugating their own countrymen). And the letters from Dilly to her daughter, Eleanora, were real and full of life.

Sadly, all of the novel that centers on Eleanora and her sad life is just empty in feel--I couldn't wait to be finished reading those sections. If, metaphorically, O'Brien wishes for the reader to see Dilly as the one full of life despite her impending death, then she succeeded. Otherwise, this novel simply fails on almost all levels to be either an enjoyable read or a book with any true enlightenment about the mother/daughter relationship.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Have you ever wondered what life was like back in the 1800s? In Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, you can feel what life was like back then. The genre of this book is adventure. I gave this book a 5 star rating because of how descriptive the author is in the book and how much suspense and adventure there is. Also, the characters in the book are very interesting and always keep you wondering what they'll do next.

The main characters in this book are Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, two boys who always find a way to create trouble and make life interesting. In this book, Tom and Huck spy on two criminals who look suspicious. Tom and Huck eventually find out that the two criminals are hiding treasure in a cave so they go on an adventure in the middle of the night to try to find the buried treasure and become rich.

My book discussion group chose this book as our July selection. I really enjoyed reading this book and was surprised that I don't recall reading it before. I really like the way the author writes like the way they used to talk back then. It might be challenging at times to understand but it is very interesting to read. I also like the way that the author makes the characters so interesting and surprising. This book has a great plot because there is always an adventure in every part of the book, even in the beginning.

Fantastic, fun story. Everyone should read it.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

At the age of 12, Will Cooper is sent to run a remote mountain trading post, which sits near an Indian village in the Appalacian Mountains. Will soon learns the Indian's language, and is befriended by their leader, a man named Bear. Bear eventually adopts Will as his own. There is also a love interest named Claire. Will falls in love with Claire from the moment they first meet. But she is married to someone else, and that is, of course, a problem.

The rest of the book focuses on the Indians trying to salvage a way of life that is already gone, and trying to protect their land from the whites and stay where they are, even though the whites want to send all the Indians to the west. As a lawyer, Will does his best to help the Indians hang onto some land and keep them from being removed to some distant reservation.

The problem with the story is that it feels rather disjointed. The story is narrated by the main character, who sometimes goes into great detail about some events, and other times skips whole years. I guess the loose central theme of the book was how the native people were losing ground in their fight to stay where they were and not be run over by the white men. But this story, and the story threads branching off of it, weren't executed very well. Also, I won't give away the ending, except to say that it wasn't so much an ending, as a fizzling out of the story.

Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer

This story starts with the birth of a boy and a girl. A human and an elphant. Born at the exact same time on the same farm, from the beginning their futures were together. Modoc tells of the amazing journey of this pair from life to death, beginning to end. Filled with heart-wrenching hi's and low's, before the end you'll have used a full box of Kleenex at least.

Bram (the boy) and Modoc (the elephant) travel all over the world. Their status changes from lowly son of a circus elephant trainer to stowaway, from fugitive to star. It even weaves the author's own part in this epic into the tale of life and death.

Modoc is a fantastic novel from start to finish and definitely worth the read.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

The Whitney women can all read lace, but Towner Whitney doesn't want any part of it, and has left Salem Massachusetts and Yellow Dog Island to get away from all the bad memories of her childhood home and the lace readings. Living in L.A. she has no intention of returning.

The book starts when she receives a call from her brother telling her that her 80-something-year-old Great Aunt Eva is missing and she must return home. Towner is recovering from a surgical procedure and had been thinking of the gift that her Great Aunt Eva had recently sent to her. It was a lace-making pillow, used for making Ipswich lace. The lace making and the reading of lace had been a tradition of the Whitney women, and Towner was no exception. Although she wants no part of it anymore, she loves her aunt and feels she has to face her bad memories and go home. Salem and Yellow Dog Island are places filled with fearful bad memories.

Towner returns after being away for over 15 years and is immediately entrenched in all the troubles of the past. It is interesting to follow the writing of author Barry as she writes through the eyes of Towner, who sometimes lives in her dreams of the past. The story is kept fresh with trying to determine if what Towner is thinking is real, or the memories from childhood twisted over time.

Of course there is the love interest in Rafferty, the detective who is assigned to the case, as well as all the other quirky characters. Salem women who are Witches and selling their wares in the small shops on the square, and the women of Yellow Dog Island and their lace, making kept this book moving along nicely.

The Lace Reader is quite an interesting book. Brunonia Barry pulled me in right away with her way of including an excerpt from The Lace Readers Guide, at the beginning of each chapter. The Salem history, entwined with the story of Towner and the strange group of characters kept me glued to this book to the end.

Women, lace, and a missing older lady makeup an interesting read.

On Agate Hill by Lee Smith

This is what 13 year old Molly Petree is doing when we meet her in 1872...living in a house filled with the ghosts of her dead family. Having lost her father and brothers in the Civil War, and her mother a few years later, Molly is left to live with her aunt Fannie and Uncle Junius. Well, after her Aunt Fannie's death during childbirth, her Uncle Junius goes into a deep state of depression, and gets very ill. Not in his normal state of mind anymore, he marries the housekeeper, and drives away his sister who has come to help. Then, upon his death, Molly is left to live with her new step-aunt Sabrina and her children...that is until a mysterious man takes her from Agate Hill, and enrolls her in Gatewood Academy School for Girls.

From there we follow Molly's life... through her four years at Gatewood, teaching at a small mountain-top school, runnin off and gettin married, the heartache of not being able to have children, a horrible fire and mysterious death, learning who the stranger that took her away from Agate Hill all those years ago really is, and why he's never let Molly very far out of his sight, and finally, old age. Molly's story is told through diary entries, court documents, and letters to a dear friend, which I really liked. It gives the story a personal feel.

Overall, I just loved this book, and I absolutely recommend it. This is one of those books that you just hate to put down, and while only a couple parts here and there were slow-going, I looked forward to reading this every chance that I got. This was my first time reading Ms. Smith but it sure won't be my last. Molly's story was so vivid and real that I had to keep telling myself it was a fiction novel.