First Chapter -- First Paragraph -- Tuesday Intros

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros.  This week's intro is from I book I read last week, but really enjoyed The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nichole Bernier.

The George Washington Bridge had never been anything but strong and beautiful, its arches monumental, cables thin and high.  Kate watched them spindling like ribs past the car window as her husband drove eastbound across the span.  It was a testimony to optimism, a suspension bridge, each far-fetched plate, truss, and girder an act of faith against gravity and good sense.

The sun was strong, glinting off the bridge and hitting the river like shattered glass.  Drivers traveling in both directions were shielding their eyes, staring as she was down the length of Manhattan.  She didn't know what any of them expected to see.  Mushroom clouds?  Skywriting in Arabic?  She wished for some visible sign of the drama where the towers had once stood.  Then she looked toward Queens, even though it was impossible to see the site from this distance.  Few people were even looking anymore, though she always would.

Mailbox Monday -- June 25th!

Welcome to Mailbox Monday which is hosted this month by the Burton Book Review.  Below are the books I received this past week:

1) One Good Friend Deserves Another by Lisa Verge Higgins.  Publisher's Summary: Dhara, Kelly, Marta & Wendy have been the closest of friends since college, so close, in fact, that after a series of communal romantic disasters, they bond together to create rules of relationships meant to keep their hearts safe. Now, at the far side of thirty-five, those rules seem to have worked for them—country-club Wendy, a curator of a small local museum, is due to marry a longtime boyfriend in an over-the-top wedding; Marta, a high-powered Latina partner in a white-shoe law firm, is living in sensual luxury with a sexy Cuban entrepreneur; Kelly, the tech-geek computer programmer, seems happy in her introverted singlehood.

Only Dhara, an Indian-American cardiologist, is struggling after the abrupt end of a long-term relationship. When she suddenly decides to agree to a traditional arranged marriage, her girlfriends gather in the hopes of stopping her from making a terrible mistake. As old relationships crumble and dangerous new ones emerge, the girls begin to realize that the rules that they made to keep their hearts safe may have also shielded them from the risky possibilities of true love.

2) You Came Back by Christopher Coake.  Publisher's Summary: Thirty-something midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has successfully moved past the accidental death of his young son Brendan, as well as his subsequent divorce from his college sweetheart Chloe. He's successful, he's in love again, and he believes he's mastered his own memories.

But then he is contacted by a strange woman who tells him not only that she owns his old house, but that she believes it to be haunted by Brendan's ghost. Will Mark--who does not believe in ghosts--come to accept the mounting evidence that Brendan's is real? Will his engagement to his new love Allison be threatened by the reappearance in Mark's life of Chloe--who does believe? If the ghost is real, what can these two wounded parents do to help their son?

Both thanks to Hachette Book Group!

3)  Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen.  Publisher's Summary. Bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead—and celebrating it all—as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more.As she did in her beloved A Short Guide to a Happy Life,Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves. Using her past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages, Quindlen talks about.

Kimdle book purchase.

Saturday Snapshot

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce At Home with Books.  Photos can be old or new, and be on any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see.  How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you.  Please don't post random photos that you find online.

 

Please excuse the dark phone camera shot, but it is the only photo I have before I devoured these amazing confections from Georgetown Cupcake.  I have a sort-of good excuse for the indulgence.  This past Mother's Day I decided to buy a dozen for my mom and since the local delivery fee is a flat rate I treated myself too.  They are the best cupcakes I have ever had (and I've sampled quite a few upscale cupcakes)!

P.S. They ship nationwide!  

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

How well does one really know others? And if the person in question kept a journal would the self portrait shock those closest to her or him?  These are the thoughts that ricocheted in my head while reading The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nichole Bernier.    

The novel, set in the recent past (2002), opens with the heroine, Kate Spenser, inheriting the journals of her recently deceased best friend Elizabeth Martin.  Elizabeth died in a plane crash a month before September 11, 2001, leaving behind a grieving husband and three young children.  In an unusual choice Elizabeth willed her journals not to her husband, but to Kate to handle as she deemed fit.  Elizabeth was a lifelong writer who left behind a trunk full of notebooks containing her innermost thoughts.  As the story progresses the Elizabeth revealed in the journals was not the one that Kate knew.  Kate is haunted by what she missed and how to handle the journals.  By the novel’s conclusion, however, Kate not only has a better grasp on who Elizabeth was, but also into her own life.

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. is a beautifully written and absorbing novel that explores the choices and sacrifices that women make between being true to themselves and raising a family.  As Bernier writes:  “You could not take a single day or night for granted.  Within every hour, every plane ride, or routine doctor’s appointment was the spark of possibility, the thing that would become your undoing.  And how you left things just before the final moment – that was how they would remain.”  Part of the story details the crucial life moments of Elizabeth and how she became the woman she was before her death.  The other half explores Kate’s need to make an important life choice.  The novel does not end in a tidy conclusion, but rather is opened ended just like real life.

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. is a remarkable debut by first time novelist Nichole Bernier!



Review based on courtesy copy sent by the publisher. 

First Chapter -- First Paragraph -- Tuesday Intros

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros.  This week's intro is from Dirty Secret by Jessie Sholl:

 I take an early flight and arrive in Minneapolis in the late morning.  That afternoon my stepmom Sandy and I are meeting my mother at the lawyer's office so I can sign the papers about the house.  My dad and Sandy normally have limited contact with my mother, but before I left New York Sandy called me and offered to help in anyway she could; she even agreed to let my mother sign power of attorney over to her, since I live so far away.  I wish I could call my brother so he could help, but that's not an option.


When my mother arrives, Sandy and I are waiting for her in the parking lot in front of the lawyer's office.  My mom gets out of her giant rusty car and I try to ignore the fact that the backseat is piled to the ceiling with garbage bags, clothes and God only knows what else.  It's April and warm for a Minneapolis spring.  My mother's in one of her signature knee-length sweater coats, the baggy black leggings she's taken to wearing in the last few years, and a roomy pale blue T-shirt, or as she say sin her lingering Boston accent, "a jersey."  Her keys hang on an orange plastic coil around her neck.  Her curly hair is completely gray now -- sometimes she dyes it brown or auburn -- and cut in chin-length bob, with bangs.  It looks pretty decent for cutting it herself.

Mailbox Monday -- June 18th!

Welcome to Mailbox Monday which is hosted this month by the Burton Book Review. This week was a light one with only one book that I purchased for my Kindle:

1) Dirty Secret by Jessie Sholl. Publisher's Summary: When her divorced mother was diagnosed with cancer, New York City writer Jessie Sholl returned to her hometown of Minneapolis to help prepare for the upcoming surgery and get her mother's affairs in order. While a daunting task for any adult dealing with an aging parent, it's compounded for Sholl by one lifelong, complex, and confounding truth: Her mother is a compulsive hoarder. Dirty Secret is a daughter's memoir of confronting her mother's disorder, of searching for the normalcy that was never hers as a child, and, finally, cleaning out the clutter of her mother's home in the hopes of salvaging the true heart of their relationship -- before it's too late.

Saturday Snapshot: Junie B.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce At Home with Books. Photos can be old or new, and be on any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.

Here are two photos of our newest dog Jaune who we call June and Junie B. or Junie B. Anthony, because she is a very independent woman. June is a rescue who was found wandering on a farm in Georgia and eventually found her way through a shelter and a rescue to our home in Maryland.  Although we've only had little Junie B. for just under six months we couldn't imagine life without her!