Book Reviews & Lists

This book has been sitting on our shelf at the Putnam Library for the past 6 years and as many times as I have shelved it, I avoided reading it because it was so unlike anything Wally Lamb has ever written. Now I wished I had not judged the book by its cover. It was one of the most enlightening reads about people whose experiences in life were so different from my own. It was like visiting a foreign culture, but this one just happens to take place in our own backyard.
 
This collection of short stories was written by ten female inmates of the York Correctional Institute in Connecticut, through a writer’s workshop with the author Wally Lamb. As I read each story my eyes were opened, my heart broke at the atrocities that humans inflict on one another, but mostly it provoked my way of thinking. These testimonies were at time overwhelming to read, and except for the grace of God, I can honestly say that here is little that separates me from the women of York.
 
As I pass this book on to others, there is just one message…while most prisoners commit crimes that put them where they are, please remember, that’s not WHO they are. Many of them are wounded and damaged, and if they had been given the love, compassion and kindness that is every person’s right, perhaps their lives could have been changed.
 
Submitted by Patricia Jensen from the Putnam Public Library.

I admit it.  I’m a sucker for an intriguing book title.  This one pulled me in, even before I had read what the book was about.  Who is Henry House and why is his name alliterative?  Why is he irresistible?  A well-crafted first sentence pulls me in also. “By the time Henry House was four months old, a copy of his picture was being carried in the pocketbooks of seven different women, each of whom called him her son.”  It turns out that Henry House (as well as previous and succeeding “practice babies”) was an orphan who was used as a subject for a domestic arts child-rearing class.  He spent his first two years being cared for in shifts by a half-dozen practice mothers.  Henry learns how to make his mothers happy, but not to get too attached to any one of them.  This is a practice that follows him into his adult life, but not to his benefit.
 
Henry is a handsome, charismatic young man with a special talent for drawing that lands him animation jobs in the 1960s with Walt Disney and the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine movie.  The reader follows the history of the time with Henry, and agonizes over his inability to develop relationships with his adopted mother and other women. The author used the historical record of Cornell University’s “practice babies” to create a life that was influenced by Henry’s past, but not defined by it as he matured. Irresistible?
You’ll have to find that out for yourself!

This mystery novel is the first in a series by Atkinson. I had heard about it several times before I put a request in our interlibrary loan system to read it. The book doesn’t follow a typical mystery novel structure where a death occurs and the detective puts the clues together and solves the case. It feels more like a novel that has mysterious undertones.  Retired policeman Jackson Brody is at the center of three very disparate cases that do not seem to be related in any way.  Case #1:  Thirty years before the book began young Olivia Land went missing and was never seen again.  Her sisters enlist Brodie’s help after their father’s death to figure out what happened to their sister. Case #2: Theo’s daughter Laura was killed in an office shooting fifteen years before.  He calls upon Brodie to find the killer so that he can start to heal emotionally.  Case #3:  Michelle makes a fatal mistake and jeopardizes her infant’s life.  Where is she after all of these years?  Brodie follows up on the clues and finds that the cases are more entangled than he thought.  I liked the frank realism of Brodie’s thoughts, and was intrigued enough to order rest of the series, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News?  I love being able to read through a series, but when you’re done you have to wait another year for the next one!