Richard Yates Giveaway ~ Easter Parade and Disturbing the Peace

 

I discovered another truly great literary fiction author in Richard Yates (1926-1992).  I was first exposed to Yates with Revolutionary Road, his debut novel. A sad story, but wonderful in it's own way.  I finally got a chance to read his book, The Easter Parade  earlier this month. It was wonderful, and, because I liked it so much I ordered several more of his books. I also read and reviewed Disturbing the Peace this month (another good book).  I just love the way he writes about less than perfect lives, and mid-century America.

So many of you commented on how much you'd like to try his work, I wanted to giveaway my (2) recent reads. BOTH are in great condition, and will go to one lucky winner (US and International). Drawing will be on the last day (31st) of May.

• Leave a comment with your email to enter
• GOOD LUCK!

Saturday Snapshots - May 21st

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.  If you are interested in participating, just post a photo (new or old), but make sure it's not one that you found online. Add your link to Alyce's Saturday post for all to enjoy.

 Sunset in Aruba - May 2008

Faith; Jennifer Haigh

Title: Faith

Author: Jennifer Haigh

Publication Year: 2011

Publisher: Harper

Edition: ARC

Source: publisher

Date Completed: 5/12/2011 

Setting: Massachusetts

Rating: 4.5/5

Recommend: yes

At the heart of this story is the sex abuse scandal which surrounded the Catholic church for a number of years. Sheila McGann, is the narrator, and the half-sister of Arthur Breen, a priest accused of molesting a shy young boy.  Aidan Colon, is the son of a single and sometimes drug dependent mother, and the grandson of Art's housekeeper.  When Sheila learns that Art has been removed from his position of parish priest, she flies back to Boston to be near her somewhat estranged family.

Sheila provides the reader with a background of their dysfunctional childhoods. Sheila was the middle child and only girl of an Irish Catholic, South Boston family.  Her mother, Mary Breen was only 18 year's old when she was deserted by her husband, an alcoholic. Art was just a baby. She later met Ted McGann and married him when Art was 12 year's old. She and Ted had Sheila and another son, Mike. Her new husband was somewhat hot tempered, and Mary herself seemed to withhold love and attention, even with her children.

When Art was just 14, he entered the seminary. It was a proud moment for his mother Mary.

"If you aren't Catholic--or maybe especially if you are--you have wondered what possess a young man to choose that life, with its elaborate privations. I asked Art this question, expecting a boilerplate Church response, that priests are called by God. His answer surprised me.  It helps he said, to be a child, with little understanding what he is forfeiting. Love to marriage to home to family: connect those dots, and you get the approximate shape of most people's lives. Take them away, and you lose any hope for connection. You give up your place in the world."

"His words startled me, the deep weariness in his voice."

So after some 25 years in the priesthood, father Art, who had always been somewhat of a loner, is removed from his church, the only real home away from home, he has known. His mother Mary is in denial -- no son of hers could have molested a young child. He just took a special interest in the shy child of a troubled mother. On the other hand, his young brother Mike, a former police officer, doubts his innocence, but Mike has a plan to flesh out the truth. And, as sister, Sheila unravels the details about the family's past, long buried secrets are brought to the forefront. 

As with her debut novel, The Condition, which I enjoyed, Jennifer Haigh has written another page turning novel. Part family drama, a story about fractured families, Faith, is a story that will hook you early on  and keep you guessing as to the guilt or innocence of Father Art. The family dynamics were both contrasting, yet compelling and addictive. It's a story that will leave you thinking, and certainly one story that puts a dose of reality over the scandal that rocked the Catholic churches.

Waiting on Wednesday - The Heart Specialist; Claire Holden Rothman

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating! Want to participate? Post your own WOW entry on your blog, and leave your link at Breaking the Spine. Here's my pick for this week.....

 The Heart Specialist; Claire Holden Rothman

June 7, 2011 - Soho Press

 Product Description
Set in Quebec at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, The Heart Specialist is the epic story of Agnes White, a lonely orphaned girl fascinated by the "wrong" things—microscopes, dissections, and anatomy instead of more ladylike interests—who rises to the status of one of the world's most celebrated pioneering women doctors. Not only does she break through patriarchal academic barriers; she masters the science of the human heart, becoming a scholar of international fame, all in a place and time inimical to intelligent women.

When Agnes is small, her father, a French-Canadian doctor living in Montreal, is charged with the murder of his handicapped sister. Although he is eventually acquitted, his reputation is ruined, and he flees, abandoning Agnes and her pregnant mother. Less than a year later, her mother dies of consumption, leaving Agnes and her baby sister Laure on their own. Agnes's sparse memories of her father have an abiding impact on her, and she is determined to find him, as well as to follow in his footsteps as a doctor, even though medical schools in Canada are closed to women at the time. She eventually gets her degree and finds a niche for herself as the curator of the McGill University pathology museum. But even as her professional star rises, her life is solitary and her happiness remains incomplete because of her missing father. One of the only clues in her quest to find him is a strange, misshapen heart that teaches her an invaluable lesson about love. Agnes ultimately must recognize that though she's a world-reknowned expert on the human heart, she still doesn't understand the her own.

Inspired by the career of Maude Abbott, one of Canada's first female physicians, The Heart Specialist is a novel about the mysterious, painful journey into selfhood. 

The Beauty Detox Solution; Kimberly Snyder

Title:  The Beauty Detox Solution

Author: Kimberly Snyder

Publication Year: 2011

Publisher: Harlequin

Edition: softcover

Source: Amazon Vine

Date Completed: 5/12/2011 

Setting: n/a

Rating: 3/5

Recommend: unsure

A book that can help me get rid of belly fat and make me look younger? Sign me up!  These were (2) of the things that appealed to me when I read this books description. However, I am realistic, but was still a bit curious.

The author's book is about ridding your body of toxins. Once you do this she claims that you will not only feel better, but also that you will be on your way to a more youthful appearance, rid yourself of wrinkles and have healthier hair and nails as well.

The secret she says is "simple diet changes", for some people it may be simpler that for others. The plan is geared toward a Vegan vegetarian diet, claiming that limiting animal protein slows down the aging process which helps you to look younger.  Some of the other tips that I took away with me after reading this book were:

• Eliminate soda from your diet (regular and diet) - it eats up important minerals
• Eliminate Splenda and Saccharin from the diet as it leads to greater weight gain than by using sugar in the same foods.
• Grazing (eating smaller but frequent meals) leads to faster aging.
• Avoid caffeine: coffee, tea (even green tea); it's taxing on the liver

There is a list of the Best Fruits and Best Veggies, that I thought was good. However, when I took a look at the (7) Day Blossoming Beauty Menu, it was so restrictive, and just sounded awful, unless you are a fan of spinach smoothies or fermented cabbage (to name a few of the terrible things on the plan).

In summary, I did get some good info out of this book, but thought it was just too too restrictive, and some of the items would be difficult to find as well. It might help slow down the aging process if you started following this plan, or most any healthy eating plan early  enough in life, but if your looking for a quick, middle-age fix to a younger you, then I think this plan will be unable to deliver --just my opinion.

First Chapter~First Paragraph (s) ~ Tuesday Intros

 

Every Tuesday, I'll be posting the opening paragraph (maybe two) of my current read.  Last week's choice was School for the Blind; Dennis McFarland (no review yet; it was another pretty good read).

 

This week's pick: The Pumpkin Eater; Penelope Mortimer

  ""Well,  " I said,  "I will try. I honestly will try to be honest with you, although I suppose really what you're more interested in is my not being honest, if you see what I mean. "

 The doctor smiled slightly.

"When I was a child my mother had a wool drawer. It was the bottom drawer in a chest in the dining room and she kept every scrap of wool she had in it. You know, bits from years ago, jumpers she knitted me when I was two. Some of the bits were only a few inches long. Well, this drawer was filled with wool, all colours, and whenever it was a wet afternoon she use to make me tidy her wool drawer. It's perfectly obvious why I tell you this. There was no point in tidying the drawer. The wool was quite useless. You couldn't have knitted a tea-cosy out of that wool, I mean without enormous patience. She just made me sort it out for something to do, like the make prisoners dig holes and fill them up again.  You do see what I mean, don't you?  "

Would you give the book a try, based on the opening paragraphs? (I love books with patient/psychiatrist narrative).

(If you care to join in, feel free to grab the image.)

Mailbox Monday - May 16th

Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on blog tour—and the host for May is:  Mari @ Mari Reads.

Here are my new arrivals for the past week. I decided to add the "product description" of each from Amazon's website, in case anyone is interested in knowing what they are about.

 

• A Storm at the Door; Stefan Merrill Block  (Random House - June 21, 2011) -

  Product Description

  The past is not past for Katharine Merrill. Even after two decades of volatile marriage, Katharine still believes she can have the life that she felt promised to her by those first exhilarating days with her husband, Frederick. For two months, just before Frederick left to fight in World War II, Katharine received his total attentiveness, his limitless charms, his astonishing range of intellect and wit. Over the years, however, as Frederick’s behavior and moods have darkened, Katharine has covered for him, trying to rein in his great manic passions and bridge his deep wells of sadness: an unending project of keeping up appearances and hoping for the best. But the project is failing. Increasingly, Frederick’s erratic behavior, amplified by alcohol, distresses Katharine and their four daughters and gives his friends and family cause to worry for his sanity. When, in the summer of 1962, a cocktail party ends with her husband in handcuffs, Katharine makes a fateful decision: She commits Frederick to Mayflower Home, America’s most revered mental asylum.
  
  There, on the grounds of the opulent hospital populated by great poets, intellectuals, and madmen, Frederick tries to transform his incarceration into a creative exercise, to take each meaningless passing moment and find the art within it. But as he lies on his room’s single mattress, Frederick wonders how he ever managed to be all that he once was: a father, a husband, a business executive. Under the faltering guidance of a self-obsessed psychiatrist, Frederick and his fellow patients must try to navigate their way through a gray zone of depression, addiction, and insanity.
  
  Meanwhile, as she struggles to raise four young daughters, Katharine tries to find her way back to Frederick through her own ambiguities, delusions, and the damages done by her rose-colored belief in a life she no longer lives.
  
  Inspired by elements of the lives of the author’s grandparents, this haunting love story shifts through time and reaches across generations. Along the way, Stefan Merrill Block stunningly illuminates an age-old truth: even if one’s daily life appears ordinary, one can still wage a silent, secret, extraordinary war.
• This Burns My Heart; Samuel Park (Simon and Schuster July 12, 2011) -
  

  Product Description

  Chamara is difficult to translate from Korean to English: To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? Such is the burden Samuel Park’s audacious, beautiful, and strong heroine, Soo-Ja Choi, faces in This Burns My Heart, an epic love story set in the intriguing landscape of postwar South Korea. On the eve of marriage to her weak, timid fiancé, Soo-Ja falls in love with a young medical student. But out of duty to her family and her culture she turns him away, choosing instead a world that leaves her trapped by suffocating customs. In a country torn between past and present, Soo-Ja struggles to find happiness in a loveless marriage and to carve out a successful future for her only daughter. Forced by tradition to move in with her in-laws, she must navigate the dangers of a cruel household and pay the price of choosing the wrong husband. Meanwhile, the man she truly loves remains a lurking shadow in her life, reminding her constantly of the love she could have had.
  Will Soo-Ja find a way to reunite with her one true love or be forced to live out her days wondering “what if ” and begin to fully understand the meaning of chamara?
  He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she’ll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.

 

(Recent Purchases)

• The True History of Paradise; Margaret Cezair Thompson (2009) -
  

  Product Description

  It is 1981. Jean Landing secretly plans to flee her beloved Jamaica–the only home her family has ever known, a place now rife with political turmoil. But before she can make her final preparations, she receives devastating news: Lana, her sister, is dead. The country’s state of emergency leaves no time to arrange a proper funeral. Even Jean’s mother, Monica, who hadn’t spoken to Lana in more than a decade, cannot fully embrace her grief.
  
  The tragedy only underscores Jean’s need to leave an island that holds no promise of a future. Her harrowing journey to freedom across a battered landscape takes Jean through a terrain of memories: of her childhood, with a detached mother at odds with an adoring father, of her complex bond with Lana, and of the friends and lovers who have shaped and shared her days. Epic in scope, The True History of Paradise poignantly portrays the complexities of family and racial identity in a troubled Eden.
• Bruised Hibiscus; Elizabeth Nunez (2003) -

  Product Description

  The year is 1954. A white woman’s body, stuffed in a coconut bag, has washed ashore in Otatiti, Trinidad, and the British colony is rife with rumors. In two homes, one in a distant shantytown, the other on the outskirts of a former sugar cane estate, two women hear the news and their blood runs cold. Rosa, the white daughter of a landowner, and Zuela, the adopted “daughter” of a Chinese shop owner used to play together as girls—and witnessed something terrible behind a hibiscus bush many years ago.
• The White Woman on the Green Bicycle; Monique Roffey (2011) -
  

  Product Description

  A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad
  
  Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of postcolonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy.
  
  When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease. As they adapt to new circumstances, their marriage endures for better or worse, despite growing political unrest and racial tensions that affect their daily lives. But when George finds a cache of letters that Sabine has hidden from him, the discovery sets off a devastating series of consequences as other secrets begin to emerge.
• Beware of Pity; Stefan Zweig (2006) -
  

  Product Description

  "Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it's good to have him back."--Salman Rushdie
  
  The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings.
  
  Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.
• The Pumpkin Eater; Penelope Mortimer (2011) -
  

  Product Description

  The Pumpkin Eater is a surreal black comedy about the wages of adulthood and the pitfalls of parenthood. A nameless woman speaks, at first from the precarious perch of a therapist’s couch, and her smart, wry, confiding, immensely sympathetic voice immediately captures and holds our attention. She is the mother of a vast, swelling brood of children, also nameless, and the wife of a successful screenwriter, Jake Armitage. The Armitages live in the city, but they are building a great glass tower in the country in which to settle down and live happily ever after. But could that dream be nothing more than a sentimental delusion? At the edges of vision the spectral children come and go, while our heroine, alert to the countless gradations of depression and the innumerable forms of betrayal, tries to make sense of it all: doctors, husbands, movie stars, bodies, grocery lists, nursery rhymes, messes, aging parents, memories, dreams, and breakdowns. How to pull it all together? Perhaps you start by falling apart.

Hope that you had a great week in books too!