St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone but the Irish spirit dominates in Heart and Soul, the latest novel by best-selling author Maeve Binchy.
Dr. Clara Casey assumes the position as director of an underfunded heart clinic in Dublin. This position is seen a step backwards in her career but she is determined to provide her best effort during the year she has agreed to remain as director. Her life and the lives of the clinic’s staff and patients provide the storyline.
There are numerous characters to keep track of, but each offers a unique perspective that is vital to the storytelling. Readers familiar with Binchy’s other novels will recognize old friends and welcome new ones. The reprise of minor characters does not represent laziness but a melding of generations with complex and compelling circumstances. Her gentle writing style is graced with humor and compassion and will appeal to any reader who loves a good story told by a talented author. -Linda (Downtown)
There are only two more days to enter our giveaway of Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife. Enter now for your chance to win a copy of this novel that is based on the life of Laura Bush.
I’ve recently been obsessed with short stories so when I saw this attractive little volume on the new books shelf, I decided to give these stories a whirl and I am so glad I did. Groff is a wonderful writer who uses beautiful and accessible imagery to illustrate her stories that center on the themes of struggling to find your true self and make sense of the restrictions and boundaries that we and others set for us. The best stories in this collection are the title story “Delicate, Edible Birds” about 5 journalists fleeing Paris during World War II, “Blythe” about a poet who gets caught up in the life of her wild and reckless friend, and “Watershed” about a woman who returns to her small hometown to get married and confronts tragedy. Even if you don’t normally read short stories, I would suggest that you try this author who has also published a novel, The Monsters of Templeton. - Anbolyn (Downtown)
Are you happy? It's hard to be optimistic when the economic news is grim - but scientific research shows much of our individual happiness lies in our own efforts. External events account for only 10% of our response to life, 50% results from our predetermined "set points," and an astonishing 40% is within our power to change! So where do we start?
Drawing on her own research with thousands of people, author and psychologist Lyubomirsky (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-happiness) has pioneered a detailed yet easy-to-follow plan to increase happiness in our day-to-day lives--in the short and long term. This book that offers a guide to understanding what happiness is and isn't, and what can be done to bring us all closer to the happy life we envision. Using more than a dozen happiness-increasing strategies, it offers a new way to understand our innate potential for joy and happiness as well as our ability to sustain it in our lives. - Lynne (Downtown)
A mysterious place of water, mud, tigers, crocodiles and dolphins stars in The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, read by Firdous Bamji, and reviewed by Star Lawrence.
The Sunderbans, on the border between India and Bangladesh, sounds like a half-mythical fairyland of goddesses, tigers and marvelous creatures of yore, but this story is set in both the present day and a generation before. Ghosh weaves together the two journeys of Nirmal, a Rilke-loving revolutionary wannabee, and Piya, an Indian-born American scientist studying fresh-water dolphins in this watery world.
The real star of the show is this archipelago of islands and rivers fed by the tides, rising and falling each day. The mangrove forests are home to huge tigers, who attack and kill several inhabitants each month. Giant crocs bask on the banks of the heaving rivers. And the Irrawaddy dolphins, friendly as piglets, poke their heads from the stream to regard their chronicler.
Nirmal’s story is one of an idealist married to a social activist. He finally retires from teaching and, half in love with a young widow with a son, gets involved in an illegal takeover of one of the islands by Bangledeshi refugees. The second story comes a generation later, when that single mother’s son, Fokir, also married to a no-nonsense, modern woman, meets Piya, the American cetologist studying dolphins. Common to both stories in Nirmal’s nephew, Kanai, a rich businessman and translator, who is also attracted to Piya.
The love stories tremble beneath the surface, barely rising visibly in the same way the rivers rise with the tides each day.
I am a 21st century woman sitting in the desert in Chandler, AZ, and this story gently tugged me in. I lived for a few days in a world where you can’t sleep untroubled on the deck of a boat anchored in the middle of a river. Tigers can swim for miles.
The reader, Firdous Bamji, is flatout fantastic—keeping the timbre and accents of each character separate, no mean feat.
As the residents of Sunderban learn to walk in calf-deep mud on the tidal beaches of their waterways, I learned to almost smell and taste the fires, the musky tiger fur, and the understated yearning of hearts trying to connect and never quite touching before being borne away on the tides.
St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone but the Irish spirit dominates in Heart and Soul, the latest novel by best-selling author Maeve Binchy.
