Anne Fortier: Juliet

One Word Summary: Siena
More Words: Wonderful. It's a little bit of a circus near the end. A charming circus. Obviously Anne Fortier and her Editor and her Agent and her Mother worked diligently to weave such an intricate plot. They did a fabulous job connecting Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet to 1340 Italy and incorporating both into a modern mystery. I loved the Author's Note. Although, it's still not clear to me what is fiction. I hate to mention the only thing I wish was better, because it'll take away from everything I did like, but here goes anyway. The romance. It seemed abrupt. Both parties accept rather quickly the reality of their former life (as The Romeo and The Juliet). I think even hopeless romantics might question their sanity before embracing a doomed reincarnated love. I wish there had been some otherworld signal to... I don't know to give a sort go ahead before they went ahead. Of course, there might not have been one on purpose, or I might have missed it. And Fortier did provide enough backstory to lend credibility to the romance. To end on a positive note, I really like the contradictory dynamics between the two sisters. This book is marvellous. Everyone should read it.

Rate: 3 maxed out credit cards

Other Books:
Never Let Me Go, by Joan Smith

Meg Waite Clayton: The Wednesday Sisters

One Word Summary: I want to be an astronaut
More Words: I like what I learned about the female experience as a wife and mother in the '60s and'70s. The book is set in a fascinating era, and I feel like I appreciate the social culture of that time better, now that I've read this story. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the book. The story is about very four very different women who start their own writing circle, all told from the perspective of one lady. Every few chapters the perspective would change and the reader would get a paragraphs worth of insight into a different lady. It was informative, confusing, and a little boring. I wished there could have been more everyday details. For example, Kath becomes a single parent. I wanted to read more about her struggle to feed and bathe and care for children and find time/energy to realize her own dreams. I wanted to read a passage where she cries, fuly clothed in an empty bathtub. Although I can understand why the author didn't delve into the everyday heartaches of motherhood; she's in the business of writing books people will read not preaching to the choir. Besides a story like that would have to be on the scale of Middlemarch. As it is the book had a sort of Forrest Gump feel- the women just sort of show up where history is happening and say stuff like: and this is how it was for us. I guess that'll just have to be good enough.

Quote:

I know writers who have a talisman or a ritual to make writing easier:
bunny slippers they wear or a certain candle they always burn when they're
writing; putting pen to paper at sunrise, or noon, or 11:00 p.m.; sitting in a
certain chair in a favorite cafe or walking their dog on the beach first;
playing one song on their iPod on infinite repeat for one novel, then choosing
another song for the next. But that always strikes me as dicey. What if the cafe
table s taken? What if the dog you walk on the beach eats your bunny slippers?
What if your iPod dies? And the fact is, we were mothers and wives; if we waited
for the stars to align just so, we'd still be waiting.

Rate: 2 sidecars

Other Books:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

Books To Read

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

Love Story by Erich Segal