Page Fifty-Seven

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Magical.

Page Fifty-Six

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney

Alex attends Themis Academy, a boarding school where the staff believes everyone to be perfect and does not engage in dealing with disputes among students. After Alex is date raped, she enlists the help of a group at the school called The Mockingbirds, named after the book To Kill a Mockingbird. With their help she attempts to seek justice for what happened to her.

This is a good young adult book that deals with a serious issue in a realistic way, as the author herself was date raped in college.

Page Fifty-Five

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neil

Baby is a twelve year-old girl living in Montreal with her father, Jules. Jules is a heroin addict, and when go from bad to worse for him, Baby is tossed into foster care and then eventually into the arms of Alphonse, a pimp. Gritty, dark, disturbing, this book was a difficult read but a page turner nonetheless.

Page Fifty-Four

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Where to start with this book? I would love to be able to cheat here and simply write what is on the back, but that does not even come close to what unfolds in this 766-page book. I picked this book up on a recommendation, and also the reviews seemed to paint quite a summer blockbuster: grossly engaging, can't put it down, one of the year's best books (and the list goes on). I was wary because the book was science-fiction, post-apocolyptic . . . everything I usually dislike and avoid. Though I thought if I could get through The Road, I could get through this. Many times I was about to toss the book aside and not finish. It is complex in its vast number of characters, scenes, dream sequences, and overall plot. In a most basic synopsis, a plan is hatched by a scientist traveling in South America and carried out by the military at a government facility in Colorado to create a drug that will prolong life. The plan requires twelve individuals; Brad Wolgast, FBI, and his partner are the two men responsible for acquiring them. All twelve are death-row convicts, so their lives - apparently - can be easily spared. The final piece of the puzzle is a young 6-year old girl, Amy, who was abandoned by her mother - a necessary fact, as the ideal group for this experiment are individuals who would not be missed from their everyday lives. Wolgast brings Amy to the facility against his better judgment, having found a fatherly affection for the young girl. Soon after their arrival at the facility, all hell breaks loose and The Twelve - by this time having turned into green-illuminated vampire-like figures (glowsticks/sticks/smokes/dracs), begin their blood-sucking rampage that will last for the next ninety-odd years . . . or more (that is when this first book ends). It is ultimately up to Amy to save the world from these freakish figures.

The book eventually became a definate page-turner for me over halfway. At times it was touching and many others definately chilling and creepy. I didn't love it though, especially not from start to finish. I found some of it confusing and the switching between scenes and characters sometimes frustrating, as was sometimes feeling like Cronin should just shut it with all the detail and side stories and move on. It was, however, a good summer read once I got into it. I can definately see this becoming a movie. Am undecided as to whether or not I will read the next book: The Twelve.

Page Fifty-Three

Room by Emma Donoghue

Jack is five. He lives with Ma in Room. Also there is Rug, Wardrobe, TV . . . Room is all Jack knows. He has not been Outside. Ma was a teenager when she was abducted by 'Old Nick' and locked inside what becomes revealed as an old garden shed. Through Jack's perspective the reader feels Ma's fierce love for her son and her need to protect him from both Old Nick and from the knowledge that there is a world outside their small Room with real people, toys, and wonderful things. However, Room cannot contain Ma and Jack forever, and the time comes when Ma knows she and Jack must leave at any cost.

I didn't think I would like this book at first, but halfway through I could not put it down. The real challenge for Jack is life outside Room. The innocence of Jack is heartbreaking amid what the reader knows his and Ma's reality really is, and amid the fast-paced and puzzling Outside.

Page Fifty-Two

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Ernest Hemingway had four wives and likely countless mistresses. This novel tells of Ernest's first wife, Hadley, a woman eight years his senior, the woman whom, at the end of his life, Hemmingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but her.

This novel confirmed what I had already known or gleaned from other texts about Hemmingway. As Hadley remarks, "He loved and needed praise. He loved and needed to be loved, and even adored" (241). The reason why Hadley and Hemmingway's relationship likely worked six or seven years is because of Hadley's ability to provide Hemmingway with what he needed at the time: praise, encouragement, unending support. In a way, Hadley herself reminded me of what Hemingway was trying to achieve in his writing: strong and simple and true. This is likely what attracted him to her. Yet, it is her need and desire to be Hemmingway's supportive wife that ultimately turned my interest in Hadley to slight disgust. Near the end of the novel when it is apparant that Hemmingway has fallen for Hadley's friend, Pauline, Hadley permits Pauline to openly become Hemmingway's mistress before the arrangment finally breaks down and Hadley agrees to divorce Hemmingway. 1920s Paris is life at its fastest: hard drinking and partying; constant traveling; zany, volatile literary figures and their partners like Pound, Fitzgerald, Stein. Hadley feels at odds with the modern Parisian who sees traditional family life and monogamy as stifling and dated. Yet Hadley, who often remarks at how she does not fit neatly into this Jazz-age Paris like her husband and friends around her, begins to sacrifice too much of herself for a husband who is selfish and obsessed with becoming one of the greatest writers of his time.

In the end, Hemmingway gives in to the darkness that is everpresent in his life and commits suicide in 1961. If we can trust McLain's representation of Hadley it seems as though she never got over her love for Hemmingway, the man who "change[d] her life" (341), even after remarrying and only seeing Hemmingway twice since their divorce.

Page Fifty-One

The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich

The novel opens with a description of sixteenth-century Venice that sets the mood for the entire text: "At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. [. . .] It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah." What these men come for is Hannah's help in delivering a baby for a wealthy Christian family. The problem is that Hannah is Jewish, and it is not only illegal for Jews to administer medical treatment to Christians, but Hannah's method she uses as a midwife may cause the Inquisition to deem her a witch. The text follows Hannah's encounter with the Conte and his wife, a sickly and frail woman who has had much difficulty producing an heir for her husband, and intersects her story with the story of her husband, Isaac, who has been captured as a slave on the island of Malta and is in need of ransom to buy his freedom and passage back to Venice.

Rich's storytelling is quite vivid in its description and suspenseful in the many hardships Hannah and Isaac face in their separate journeys to reconnect with one another. I would not say this book is amazing, but it was a satisfying read.