Don’t Cry For Me By Daniel Black (A Book Review)

Jacob Swinton’s life is coming to a close. He is met with a sense of urgency to write to his son Isaac. He shares his life’s story through a series of letters. The letters; part revelation, part remorse, detail Jacob’s upbringing, his marriage, his divorce, and his beliefs on manhood, etc.

Jacob’s view on life and manhood is challenged when his son Isaac is born. Isaac, an expressive child bubbling over with feelings, did not enter the world in typical male fashion. This serves as the catalyst for the complexities that make up he and his father’s relationship.

Jacob’s letters shed light into the intergenerational divide of societal norms that is so deep between father and son. Although vestiges of growth is apparent in the letters, it struggles against his innate inability to have a demonstrative love towards his son. He is a flawed man ridden with inner conflict that is true to men of a particular generation. 

What I appreciated most about Don’t Cry For Me is the authenticity. It shed light on the less than ideal reality of some family relationships.

*****Some insightful and poignant quotes from the book:

November 27th, 2003 chapter
“If you still don’t understand why I’m telling you all this, just keep reading. A man’s history is all he has. It says more than his mouth ever will. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. ” ~Jacob

November 28th, 2003 chapter
“I stood there wondering how this had happened to me, thinking of all the things I’d do differently  if I could live again. It was useless thinking,  if course. Nothing was about to change. Not for me. There are no do-overs in this life. Either you get it right or wish you had.”~ Jacob

December 24th, 2003 chapter
I always called you boy. When a father calls a boy son, he’s declaring his pride in him. I didn’t feel this way about you, even when you got grown.~Jacob

January 17th, 2004 chapter
The more I read, the more I saw myself. Knowledge is a funny thing, Isaac. It informs by exposing. It shows you precisely how much you don’t know.~Jacob

January 26th, 2003 chapter
Silence isn’t always quiet though. It troubles a man’s soul, forcing him to admit what he’d rather forget.~ Jacob

February 5th, 2004 chapter
Reading taught me that a man’s own life is his own responsibility, his own creation. Blaming others is a waste of time. No one can make you happy if you’re determined to be miserable.

All I wanted was to look you in the face and tell you I’m sorry. I had wounded you beyond my capacity to heal you.

Love doesn’t make us perfect; it makes us, want to be. By the time you discover this, your imperfections have done their damage.

February 8th, 2004 chapter
A man’s son is his truth unadorned. When he can look at him and be proud, his fatherhood is complete.

February 10th, 2004
You must learn to uproot unwanted seeds without destroying the entire harvest.

Rating 10/10

My Other Husband By Dorothy Koomson (A Book Review)

Cleo Forsum, a novelist, is relatively successful in most aspects of her life. She writes best sellers, turned those best sellers into a successful TV show, and has a loving husband and extended family. So why does she want to abandon it all to start anew? When people close to her start turning up hurt or dead, it is evident that something sinister is lurking in the shadows beckoning her to leave it all behind. These criminal acts are almost identical to the crimes in her best-selling novels, which gives reason to the police to be doubtful of Cleo’s innocence.

Cleo just wants the violence to end. Will her compliance with the demand from a figure from her past be enough to stop the bloodshed?

This book was a slow burn. The story became predictable quite early on. About the halfway mark, the predictability was laid right out in the open only to twist ever so slightly and on to another trajectory making this a beautifully treacherous ride. My only grievance was that the book was a bit too long, it could have been shorter. I will be reading more from Dorothy Koomson though, she has tickled my fancy for her other work.

Rating 8/10

Hush Delilah by Angie Gallion (A Book Review)

Delilah Reddick is a woman trapped in her own life. She’s in a brutal cycle of abuse at the hands of her husband, Chase. Her best friend Carmen constantly pleads for her to leave, but it’s not so simple.

As Delilah folds into herself and examines her life both present and past, she sees a very small glimpse of a silver lining in the unraveling of the tight grip of the abuse. However, exactly what that silver lining will cost, is a thought that shakes Delilah to her core. There is her son Jackson, who would be collateral damage in it all.

This book delves deep into multiple perspectives of what abuse and the decisions linked to it looks like, depending on what a person’s viewpoint about it is. It explores how an abused person wrestles with vaccillating and ruminating thoughts and the difficulty in deciding weighty matters.

Delilah’s inner guilt leaped through the pages. I felt her guilt of how she found herself in what she viewed as a very pitiful place in her life. It appeared most of her guilt involved what she viewed as a betrayal of her own self.

As a reader, it was important to know the delicacy of the situation and not judge her, but to feel compassion. This book opened my heart and made it sensitive to inner battles that others may have to deal with, sometimes with very arresting characteristics. The author really captured the essence of the whirlwind, the fog, and the ties of a toxic relationship.  It was a great book.

Rating: 10/10

Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor (A Book Review)

Jay Gatsby, an alluring young man with promise, was shot to death at his West Egg, NY home. For all intents and purposes, this is a clear cut case of murder-suicide between local mechanic George Wilson and Jay Gatsby.

Not everyone believes this solid and neatly crafted conclusion to this unfortunate ordeal. Enter Detective Frank Charles, who is called in to find out what really happened. Detective Charles is relentless and is determined to do just that once he finds a diamond hairpin near the murder scene.

During his investigation, three women become persons of interest. Daisy Buchanan, a woman from Gatsby’s past who is currently married to Tom Buchanan, a philandering millionaire. Jordan Baker, an excellent golf player who plays on the national circuit, is Daisy”s best friend and knows Gatsby from earlier years as well. Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, passionate about women rights, whose sister Myrtle Wilson, is in an abusive marriage, is also a familiar acquaintance of Gatsby.

All three women are entangled in an intricate web of deception and obsession, carefully orchestrated by Gatsby himself. Will Detective Charles uncover the truth of who really led Gatsby to his demise?

A brilliant remix on the classic, The Great Gatsby, Beautiful Little Fools, offers a strongly crafted possibility of what happened to J. Gatsby. It is told from the perspectives of the women in Gatsby’s world.

I absolutely loved the reworking of The Great Gatsby. In Beautiful Little Fools, Cantor with much care and respect for the original story, beautifully offered a nuanced retelling of the timeless classic. It brought into focus the women of the Great Gatsby in an interesting way. I thoroughly enjoyed every drop.

Rating 9/10

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (A Book Review)

Alex and Lacy are mothers whose lives crash into each other as a result of a tragic event. Though they possess different parental styles, the women simultaneously face inner turmoil and self doubt in how they reared their children. They are uncertain of their role and standing in their children’s lives. Josie and Peter are young adults trying to figure out life and how they exist in the world. But lurking just beneath the surface of their identity, is the pure unadultered truth of who they really are. That particular fact shows up differently in Josie and Peter, causing them to travel slightly different paths.

For Peter, what is has always been. For Josie, it’s a very fine line she walks that shuffles her between two very different worlds. For Peter there is absolution in how he exists in the world. For Josie, her identity is warped within her inner self. She’s aware of who she is deep down but struggles with the person she presents to the world. This causes a painful inner turmoil in her. Will she find the tools to soothe her tortured soul?

What about Alex and Lacy? When things are brought to the light, will they continue to let self doubt wash over them? Or will they accept that other factors also play a role in how life turns out for an individual?

I felt this story with my whole heart. I ached for certain characters in different ways. It seemed that Alex could not find her footing as a parent, while Lacy was initially confident in her role as a parent. However, everything Lacy thought she had right was soon placed under a microscope, prime for dissection. Lacy’s husband, Lewis, was detached in my opinion. He kept measuring reality against formulas and probabilities. I kept wanting him to be in the moment, to stare at the truth in its fullness. He did show glimpses of that in a few situations, which was good.

The story left me with several takeaways. It’s easy to judge others while you are standing outside their world. But when life sends you challenges, how you handle a situation is based on many factors, not isolated ones. It’s never just one thing. How you handle things can be affected by your experiences, your viewpoints shaped by those experiences, your feelings about yourself and the world, and the truth as you know it to be in your mind. Sometimes it’s hard to see other people’s truth if you staunchly view the world differently. It can be possible but it requires compassion and empathy. If you don’t have those traits and are not willing to find them, then hope in some situations will remain dire.

I read another novel by Jodi Picoult years ago (Small Great Things) which I enjoyed also. After reading this novel, Picoult has secured a place as a favored storyteller. I like how she can leave me bewildered with all the complexities in the story. More times than not, I questioned myself on how I really felt about a situation in the story. She arrests the reader in how she delivers her stories. If you want to be challenged in how you think you view things, Picoult masters this as an author.

Rating: 10/10