A Little Something For Ringo

Sorry, this is an interruption from the usual book related programming.

Our dog, Ringo, left us yesterday. He was 14 years old, so it was a possibility we were at once expecting and ignoring, so when it happened it still came as too much of a shock. He'd been having health problems but none that we thought would be imminently life threatening.

He was a Christmas puppy for me when I was in the seventh grade, and true to form, he loved Christmas. Nothing gave him greater joy than ripping open Christmas presents, so much so that one year when we were wrapping presents, he grabbed a scrap of paper and put it over one of his toys and attempted to "unwrap" it again. When it came to his name, Ringo got it honest. He loved to run rings around us and around the house. He was never as much for fetch as he was for keepaway. Ringo always loved to be chased and loved for everyone to want whatever he had. A lot of people didn't quite get his appeal. He was a one-family kind of dog, but when it came to us, he loved with all his heart.

Through all this, I can't help thinking about taking him for walks when he was a young dog. Despite my best efforts, he'd always manage to slip his collar. I can remember one day when I was chasing him along the road, traffic perilously close, desperate to catch him and avert certain catastrophe. Chasing and yelling and crying wasn't doing the trick. Then I remembered - Ringo loved to chase almost as much as he loved to be chased. Tears streaming down my face, I did the most counterintuitive thing imaginable. I turned around and ran. Soon enough, there he was - chasing me home.

Thanks for all the joy you brought to our lives, Ringo. We'll miss you so much, but one day, we'll be the ones chasing you home.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: So Much For That

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



So Much For That by Lionel Shriver
Harper Collins, March 9

From the publisher:

Shep Knacker has long saved for "The Afterlife": an idyllic retreat to the Third World where his nest egg can last forever. Traffic jams on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway will be replaced with "talking, thinking, seeing, and being"—and enough sleep. When he sells his home repair business for a cool million dollars, his dream finally seems within reach. Yet Glynis, his wife of twenty-six years, has concocted endless excuses why it's never the right time to go. Weary of working as a peon for the jerk who bought his company, Shep announces he's leaving for a Tanzanian island, with or without her.

Just returned from a doctor's appointment, Glynis has some news of her own: Shep can't go anywhere because she desperately needs his health insurance. But their policy only partially covers the staggering bills for her treatments, and Shep's nest egg for The Afterlife soon cracks under the strain.

Enriched with three medical subplots that also explore the human costs of American health care, So Much for That follows the profound transformation of a marriage, for which grave illness proves an unexpected opportunity for tenderness, renewed intimacy, and dry humor. In defiance of her dark subject matter, Shriver writes a page-turner that presses the question: How much is one life worth?

What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?

Trigger by Susan Vaught

There are a lot of things that Jersey Hatch doesn't know. He doesn't know why exactly his best friend can't stand the sight of him, why his parents are acting so strangely, and he can't figure out just what must have happened that made him shoot himself. Everything he once knew about the year previous was wiped clean on the day that Jersey shot himself in the head with his father's gun. All Jersey knows now is that it's a challenge to walk, to talk, to think. He knows he has scars, that things will never be the same, and that he needs some answers to the questions no one will ask.

We meet Jersey upon his release from his final brain injury hospital. He's headed home to the real world, where life will be much harder. Immediately, we're captured by Jersey's sardonic narration that shows through the pieces of his personality that survived his injury at the same time as it shows how his thought patterns are terribly altered and difficult to focus after the fact. He mocks his mom and his doctor and their favorite repeated phrases, is haunted by the ghost of his former overachieving self, "Jersey Before," and rails against his minder at school, the unfortunately named Ms. Wenchel who he quickly nicknames "the Wench." Despite the brain damage that alters his way of thinking and makes his mind cluttered with all sorts of unrelated words that seem to get stuck in his thoughts and repeat over and over, Jersey's narration is clear-eyed and revealing of himself and of the people around him.

Vaught, a neuropsychologist by trade, has used her experience and expertise to write a terribly convincing story. Jersey is a compelling narrator and a sympathetic one. Despite the people he has hurt by trying to take his own life, Jersey's frustrations in bridging the thought to speech divide, his humiliation at his limitations, as well as his quest for the answers that don't come easily make it impossible for us not to feel his unbearable pain. Jersey's search for answers creates suspense that makes Trigger difficult to put down. Yet even as the plot moves toward its climax, Trigger asks us to consider suicide and its far-reaching repercussions and even forces us to consider, by way of Jersey's interactions, the variety of wrongheaded ways we "normal" people view and interact with the mentally handicapped ranging from fear and awkwardness to laughter to downright cruelty. So vivid and penetrating is this theme that cuts to the heart of our insecurities about our behavior around those that are "different" that even as I read it, I was unsure whether it was "right" or not to giggle at the absurd things that get stuck in Jersey's head that he repeats ceaselessly without meaning to, and whether I should feel bad if I did giggle.

Overall, Trigger is a profound, powerful, fast-moving story that asks all the right questions without ever resorting to preaching at us. Though marketed as YA, this book is well-worth reading for young and old alike.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Whiter Than Snow

I always see posts for this meme and enjoy them so much and then wonder why I don't participate. Today seems as good as any to start, and you'll notice, maybe, that snow is on my mind like it seems to be on a lot minds today!



"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas
St. Martin's Press, March 30

From the publisher:

Whiter Than Snow opens in 1920, on a spring afternoon in Swandyke, a small town near Colorado’s Tenmile Range. Just moments after four o’clock, a large split of snow separates from Jubilee Mountain high above the tiny hamlet and hurtles down the rocky slope, enveloping everything in its path including nine young children who are walking home from school. But only four children survive. Whiter Than Snow takes you into the lives of each of these families: There’s Lucy and Dolly Patch—two sisters, long estranged by a shocking betrayal. Joe Cobb, Swandyke’s only black resident, whose love for his daughter Jane forces him to flee Alabama. There’s Grace Foote, who hides secrets and scandal that belies her genteel façade. And Minder Evans, a civil war veteran who considers his cowardice his greatest sin. Finally, there’s Essie Snowball, born Esther Schnable to conservative Jewish parents, but who now works as a prostitute and hides her child’s parentage from all the world.

Ultimately, each story serves as an allegory to the greater theme of the novel by echoing that fate, chance, and perhaps even divine providence, are all woven into the fabric of everyday life. And it’s through each character’s defining moment in his or her past that the reader understands how each child has become its parent’s purpose for living. In the end, it’s a novel of forgiveness, redemption, survival, faith and family.

What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg

People believed bad things came in threes. Eve thought they came in packs, like wolves.

If troubles come in packs, nobody would know better than Eve. When her husband simply drives off during her summer yard sale under the guise of running errands and doesn't return, life becomes very complicated for Eve, and that's only the beginning. Suddenly finding herself a single mom to her two children, teenage Marcus and nine-year-old Noni, Eve is adrift. With Chuck's departure, it seems that everything in Eve's life is coming unglued. Her aging mother, Charlotte Dunrea, moves from the south to Binghamton, ostensibly to help, but actually needing much more help than she's able give. Eve fears for her job when an unhinged co-worker calls her purpose into question. Her one possible romantic interest seems hardly interested in her. She can't even take her dogs to the park and train them on the racquetball courts that have fallen into disuse for the winter without raising the ire of a slightly frightening, if ultimately goodhearted, park worker. All this is not to mention her almost ex-husband who seems to be popping up on the phone and even in person, just when Eve thinks she might be able to move on from the wreckage of their relationship.

Home Repair is a book that calls to mind the sort of books Laura Moriarty (The Center of Everything, The Rest of Her Life) writes. It's the kind of book where nothing especially major seems to happen, but it serves as a slice of the life of memorable and sympathetic characters who remind us of ourselves. It's hard not to feel for Eve as she navigates the everyday trials that are piling up at her front door even as she tries to adjust to tackling problems all on her own. Her two children, Marcus, a politically inclined gifted public speaker who can't seem to get his driver's license, and Noni, who, at nine years, seems preternaturally wise and yet unable to grasp why her father would simply leave one summer day, easily draw our sympathy as well.

Home Repair is a great story of a woman finding herself and discovering just what she is capable of on her own. It's a story about family and how sometimes the best families aren't always made up of people who are actually related. It's even a story of how it's never too late for love to make a difference in our lives.

Sometimes the story is a little too fragmented, and sometimes I thought it might benefit from a good, compelling first person narration that packs more of an emotional punch, as seen in Laura Moriarty's books, but ultimately Home Repair is a story with heart and is a well-worth-reading contribution to that "genre" of books that exposes the lives of all those characters that are just like you and me while at the same time making us think twice about the good things in our lives that are all too easy to take for granted.


(Review copy provided by the author.)