A Thousand Pardons

A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee
Random House, 3/12/2013
Hardcover, 224 pages

ISBN-13: 9780812993219 

Description:

In this sharply observed tale of self-invention and public scandal, Dee raises a trenchant question: what do we really want when we ask for forgiveness?
Once a privileged and loving couple, the Armsteads have now reached a breaking point. Ben, a partner in a prestigious law firm, has become unpredictable at work and withdrawn at home—a change that weighs heavily on his wife, Helen, and their preteen daughter, Sara. Then, in one afternoon, Ben’s recklessness takes an alarming turn, and everything the Armsteads have built together unravels, swiftly and spectacularly.
Thrust back into the working world, Helen finds a job in public relations and relocates with Sara from their home in upstate New York to an apartment in Manhattan. There, Helen discovers she has a rare gift, indispensable in the world of image control: She can convince arrogant men to admit their mistakes, spinning crises into second chances. Yet redemption is more easily granted in her professional life than in her personal one.
As she is confronted with the biggest case of her career, the fallout from her marriage, and Sara’s increasingly distant behavior, Helen must face the limits of accountability and her own capacity for forgiveness.

My Thoughts:

 

In A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee, Ben and Helen Armstead have a marriage that is predictable but also in crisis. Lawyer Ben's nefarious, self-centered and irresponsible actions wreck complete destruction on the family. Ben, facing several legal issues, is sent off to rehab and his assets are frozen. Helen is advised to divorce Ben, which she does, and then she must find a job.

 

Helen, who was a stay-at-home mom for many years ends up finding a job with a very small public relations firm in Manhattan. It turns out that she has a gift for crisis management PR as she persuades clients to apologize for their real or perceived misdeeds. This quickly turns into a great job with a top firm ($90k plus benefits). Helen ends up selling the family home and moving with their adopted Chinese daughter, Sara, to the city.

 

While I wanted to like this novel there are just too many glaring problems with it for me. First, this novel has a message of forgiveness - that seemingly an apology can make-up for any number of infractions. The problem is that none of the apologies presented have any basis in reality. The majority have their genesis as PR stunts. The others are incongruous with the facts or the personalities (specifically Hamilton and Ben later in the novel.)

 

Another glaring problem is Helen's job. Please... She is not working for over 18 years other than doing the local fund raising events, and volunteer work, etc., that stay-at-home-moms are noted for doing. Then she suddenly gets a PR job, at which she is so gifted that in a seemingly short span of a few months and with uncommonly fair prevailing circumstances, she is miraculously hired by a top firm. She goes from zero to 90k plus benefits a year in a matter of months. Let me clue you in - it ain't gonna happen. In reality she would find a job at which, if she is lucky, she'd make more than minimum wage and get benefits. I can suspend disbelief for a novel but I'm not willing to go this far a field.

 

There were some other niggling problems that also took away from the forgiveness message for me. It almost seems to me that this novel is incomplete, or perhaps it loses focus before it is a fully realized narrative.

 

The good parts of  A Thousand Pardons include great writing and a quickly moving plot that keeps you reading. He also gifts his characters with some keen insight into their problems and feelings - even though this insight is inconsistent.

 

Recommended - for those times when Dee's gift for insight shines through the murkiness

 

Excerpt

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House and Netgalley for review purposes.

Appearances and Other Stories

Appearances and Other Stories by Margo Krasne
Wasteland Press; October 28, 2012
Trade Paperback, 160 pages

ISBN-13: 9781600477911 http://www.margotkrasnespeakup.com/

Description:

In this debut collection, Krasne wields insightful irony and cathartic black humor to illuminate her themes of loss, yearning and survival, bringing to it a biting female perspective. An adept stylist with an ear for dialogue and an eye for personal foibles, Krasne cleverly captures the distinct voices of her characters as they strive to negotiate the subtle and not-so-subtle minefields of family obligation and personal conflict. She has a knack for getting inside her characters' heads as they strive to keep up appearances. Readers will most surely recognize themselves, their friends and family members in all of these beautifully rendered stories.

 

My Thoughts:

 

Appearances and Other Stories is Margo Krasne's debut short story collection. The twelve story collection is organized into two parts. Part One: The Wallach's, contains nine stories about the Wallachs, a Jewish family living in New York City. The stories focus on Alice, the youngest daughter, and how she perceives her family, but mainly her parents. Each story is exquisitely crafted to capture the misunderstandings, affection, resentments, and history that happen in every family. The stories cover Alice as a teen to an adult. In Part Two: The Other Stories, Krasne's shares three separate, unrelated short stories. 

 

Stories included are:

Part One: The Wallach's: The Bacher Boy; The Move; In The Living Room; Truce; Coda; Last Wishes and All That; The Fifth Question; Appearances; The Last Rumba.

Part Two: The Other Stories: At The Algonquin; Re-unions; Stopping Time.

 

All the stories in this collection are stunning, extraordinary... The Wallach family stories were heart breaking, but so brilliant in their execution and poignant in their revelations. If forced to pick one story that was my least favorite, I'd have to say "Re-unions," but that is simply based on my reaction to it, certainly not on the quality of the writing.

 

Very Highly Recommended 

 

 

 

 

Margo Krasne, born and raised in Manhattan, has always led two lives. As a radio advertising producer, she sculpted; as a sculptor, she was an extra in commercials, and for the past 24 years, as a communications coach and author of Say it with Confidence, she writes fiction whenever possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quotes:

 

"You did go out with the Bacher boy, Alice, I remember it distinctly."

Alice looks at her mother propped up in bed - the stained rose-satin bed jacket in sharp contrast to her mother's alabaster skin now tinged with yellow violet veins - and tells a half-truth, "Well, I don't, Mom. I don't remember going out with him at all."

"But you did, dear. I'm certain of it."

"If you say so," Alice says as she rearranges the pillows. "There! Better?"

Alice needs to change the subject. The last thing she wants is to have old resentments creep in; she's worked too long and hard to put them at rest. Besides, this is not the time. Not the time at all. "The Bacher Boy" pg 3

 

Mr. Wallach continues his harangue and Alice tries hard not to listen. But her eyes well up distorting the woman in the painting, and the two on the sofa, until they appear as shapes seen through a windshield in a rainstorm. Alice digs the nail of her third finger into her thumb. It's a trick her father aught her. Inflict pain on one part of your body to keep your feelings from showing. Only it doesn't work. Well, she will not break down in front of him. Not! "In the Living Room" pg. 25-26

 

They had been at war since she was six months old. A war, according to her mother, Alice had started. "I know you were six months old. Six months! We just couldn't understand it."

Well, neither could Alice. But she'd accepted her mother's version.... Well, no more. Not to render metaphorical overkill, but digesting what her mom had been dishing out was over. The time for a refutation had come. Besides, she was under express orders to "Do it!"

"Mom, you have to think it strange I was capable of hating anyone, nevertheless my own father, at six months of age?" She knows the response will be borne, as always, on a sigh of resignation. It is.

"I'm not saying it wasn't strange, just that's the way it was."

"You've got to realize how crazy that sounds."

"Oh, Alice, please. This is neither the time nor the place." "Truce" pg. 29

 

What had her first therapist said? Rebels are attached to that which they rebel against? "Appearance" pg. 71

 

A part of my brain is frozen. Another part has this weird idea that the doctor's pronouncement is my just desserts for hating suspense. That this entire scenario is tied to my life-long habit of skipping to the last page. That's it, isn't it? Due to my refusal to read along, moment by moment, page by page, without knowing how a story ends, I have been sentenced to death - the time and date approximate, but definite to occur. "Stopping Time" pg. 125

 

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the author and Premier Virtual Author Book Tours for review purposes.    

Tim Rowland’s Creature Features

Tim Rowland’s Creature Features  by Tim Rowland
High Peaks Publishing, 11/16/2012
eBook, 160 pages

ISBN-13: 9780976159742
http://www.timrowlandbooks.com/

Description:

When Tim Rowland’s earlier book of his animal essays, All Pets are Off, was published, readers immediately clamored for more... So here’s a new volume of over 75 columns, from the introduction to the farm of bovines Cleopatra and Heifertiti, the Belted Galloway beauties, to the further antics of Hannah the English Bulldog and Juliet the tiny Siamese---and of course, more of the joyful bouvier des Flandres named Opie---that’s sure to provide loads of smiles and even outright guffaws.

My Thoughts:

Tim Rowland’s Creature Features is a new collection of 75 essays from Rowland's column at Herald-Mail Media in Hagerstown, Maryland. The essays, written between June 2008 and October 2012, are all about the animals Tim and his wife Beth lived with on their "Little Farm by the Creek" in  Boonsboro, Maryland.
 

Rowland writes:

"Will Rogers said he ever met a man he didn’t like; by contrast, my wife Beth and I never met an animal we didn’t like. No question about it, our course is less challenging than Mr. R’s. But that doesn’t mean that our souls have not been tried time and time again, and our patience stretched well beyond the breaking point to the regions where it snaps and sends us over top of Mars." Page 11

"So we started with a pair of dairy goats. Or maybe it was the flock of chickens. It all starts to run together at this point. Pretty soon we had an ark-like assembly of about every farm animal that comes to mind. People who collect cars go through the same dynamic, I suppose. After a while the frame of logic shifts from 'Do we need it?' to 'What’s one more?' ” Page 12

"So with this collection of essays, I am letting animals past and present know that I forgive them. I absolve them of their sins, because hopefully some good has come from it, and I can focus on the laughs and entertainment they have provided to both myself and, hopefully, the reader.

Now if only the animals can see their way clear to forgive me. Page 12

Their wide assortment of animals (pets if they have a name, food if they don't) include: Juliet, the Siamese cat; Hannah the bulldog; Opie the Bouvier des Flandres; Magellan the zucchini eating pig, Roosters Stink and Chuckles, Doodlebug the cantankerous miniature horse; Cappy the horse, cows Cleopatra, Heifertiti, and the princesses; goats Hillary and Horsefly; plus horses, donkeys, more goats, llamas, chickens, geese, more pigs, and turkeys.

Some of the essays included in this collection are:

Egyptian royalty takes up residence on farm

Patch makes horse berry upset

Magellan the pig as adventurous as namesake

Ill-fitted pair finds short-term love on the farm

Cats live to make people look foolish

Broody duty has disastrous underpinnings

Rooster that eats stink bugs not for sale at any price

Chuckles the rooster avoids date with death

Goats, pigs compete for overconditioned kudos

This Thanksgiving promises to be the best ever

British invasion brings changes in pig culture

Turkeys go to big garnished platter in the sky

Darwin was wrong: Sometimes it’s “survival of the most pathetic.”

An Elizabethan collar by any other name would be a ‘Happy Hat”

This collection was hilarious. I laughed, hooted, snorted, whooped, chortled, wheezed, sputtered, chuckled, snickered, guffawed, howled... In other words, as I was reading Tim Rowland’s Creature Features, I sounded like I belonged on Tim and Beth Rowland's farm. The stories are short and easy to read, but thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. The word play Rowland engages in is a great part of what made these short essays so wonderful and satisfying. I wish I could share one of his columns with you, but you'll have to settle for some selected quotes below and read the book.
  
I'd like to also read Tim Rowland's earlier book, All Pets are Off, which is more about his pets while Creature Features focuses on other animals on the farm. 

Very Highly Recommended - I loved this collection

Great News! I received the following from Beth Rowland:

And because of the requests we received after your and other reviews on Tim's tour, we made his earlier book All Pets are Off available as an ebook. It's available on Kindle now and is coming to seven other platforms over the next weeks. 

All Pets are Off

 I've bought my copy!

Quotes:

This assigns a lot of logic to the thought patterns of a dog, an enterprise that to my knowledge has made no person rich. But I was willing to hear the man out.Page 15 

Natural Resources folks say the bear—fairly small and about 18 months old—had probably just gotten kicked out of his mom’s domain and was looking for new turf he could call home.

First, mad props to the bear community for realizing something that we, as a human race, still haven’t mastered. That being, when you turn 18, you need to get out. There are no 26-year-old bears living in their parents’ basements surfing the Internet and showing no real interest in advancing past their career as night manager at Wendy’s. Page 19

I have a soft spot for turtles, as do all people who were not allowed to have a dog or cat as a child, and for whom a turtle became the Pet of Last Resort. I even went so far as to put a leash on mine to add to the delusion.Page 22  

I never knew much about mares before, but to them, everything is High Drama. For drama, mares make a teenage girl look like Alan Greenspan. Page 29

Broody hens are basically chickens that want to become mothers. They stop laying eggs and do nothing but sit sullenly on a nest all day watching “The Guiding Light.” Page 62 

Hannah’s issue is that she wants to, as Beth says, “Be with her people.” If you have watched a dog show, you know that a bulldog is not in the hunting class, herding class or working class, they are simply listed as “companion dogs.” This means they have no discernible, professional contribution to society. In the human world, they would be known as “consultants.” Page 70 

He was quite handsome, but like a lot of pretty boys didn’t always have the mental firepower to match. Page 86  

Tim Rowland is an award-winning columnist at Herald-Mail Media in Hagerstown, Maryland. He has written for numerous history and outdoor magazines and news syndicates nationwide.

He has also authored several books, most recently Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War and including All Pets are Off: A Collection of Hairy Columns, Petrified Fact: Stories of Bizarre Behavior that Really Happened, Mostly, Earth to Hagerstown, High Peaks: A History of Hiking the Adirondacks from Noah to Neoprene and Maryland's Appalachian Highlands: Massacres, Moonshine & Mountaineering.

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the author and Premier Virtual Author Book Tours for review purposes.   

 

The Tale of Lucia Grandi; The Early Years

The Tale of Lucia Grandi; The Early Years by Susan Speranza
Brook House Press, 10/20/2012
Trade Paperback, 426

ISBN-13: 9780944657010

http://www.susansperanza.com/

Description:

When an old woman is asked to recount the story of her life, she tells an intense and poignant tale about growing up in and surviving a warring suburban family during the 1950s and ’60s.
Written as a memoir, each chapter describes a particular incident in Lucia’s life which shows the constant struggle between her parents and the perverse effect it has on her and the family. From her complicated and unwanted birth, to her witnessing a suicide at age 3, to her stint as a runaway at age 14, the story progresses to the final crisis where as a young woman, she is turned out of her house and banished from her family forever.
Told in breathtakingly beautiful prose, this is a powerful and timeless story of a dying woman’s courageous attempt to come to terms with her past and the troubled family that dominated it.

My Thoughts:

 

The Tale of Lucia Grandi by Susan Speranza begins with 110 year old Lucia sitting, waiting for something, in a retirement home.

"The world thinks me dead, but there is a lot of life left in these old bones yet. I’ve been absent from the world for a long time. But I’m here. Waiting.

Waiting.

I’m an old woman now. I spend my days looking out on a world where once I have had my play." (Location 99-103) 

 

Then a doctoral student in literature asks 110 year old Lucia to share her life's story:

"She looked down nervously, as if the reality of my static existence here at the end of my life embarrassed her. Then she cleared her throat, raised her head and looked directly at me, adopting a more formal stance. “My name is Beatrice Cummings. I’m a doctoral student in Literature at the University and my dissertation is –” she hesitated as if trying to find the right words “– my dissertation examines the oral histories of living people, autobiographies, as it were, told by older people…”

A silence fell over the room, as she turned her head and looked at me askance. She continued. “I’d like to know if you would be willing to tell me your –” and again she hesitated “– your life’s story.” (Location 138-144)

 

Lucia considers her question, and, with the tape recorder humming in front of her, she decides:

"Of one thing I was certain. Whether she was simply a graduate student or some harbinger of life’s end, I knew that so long as I spoke, I could extend this moment forever. For in this one moment I was still alive, I was still safe. And even though I was old, I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to be safe.

But what was I going to talk about?"  (Location 183-186)

 

Thus begins the tale of Lucia Grandi's life.

 

The narrative flows just like a memoir and is so well executed that I really forgot that this is a novel and not an autobiography.  Even before her birth, Lucia mere existence was a battle.

"Even then, before I knew my name or was conscious of life and the world, my battle began, my endless war with existence and its cruel, arbitrary nature. Before I knew the word no or could say or think or feel the word no, I uttered it in some silent and long forgotten language: no, I will not submit; no, I will not accept this; no, it will not be. I will not let it be... So I clung to life with a tenacity that would define me, and that awful, continuous struggle with existence would shape every aspect of my life to this end." (Location 253-257)

 

Lucia is born on June 1, 1951, the second daughter in a volatile family. Her parents, Ruth and Leonard, are at war with each other. Neither of them wants a second daughter. It is into this loveless and sometimes brutal home that Lucia is born.

"So it was on that early June morning, I fell with a thud into this unwelcoming family as if the Stork had played a perverse joke on me and on them – and dropped me into the wrong nest. Thus I began my life.

Even when Ruth and Leonard didn’t intend it, they indulged in irony. So they named me Lucia, which means light, yet it was always the darkness that informed my life. And they named their eldest child Jocelynn which means joy. Yet never was there a child so joyless or so melancholy. It wasn’t really her fault; she was merely a female version of Leonard who was serious and grim by nature." (Location 296-303)

 

This exquisitely written novel follows Lucia's life up to age 23. As she shares the events that made up her, she also relates the history of several of her family members. Lucia is a girl who learns to keep her mouth shut, but now, telling her story as an old woman, she is free to share exactly what happened and what she thought and felt as she reflects on the events in her childhood.

 

This novel is presented so convincingly as a memoir that, as I was reading I truly forgot it is fiction. It all seems so true to life. I became totally wrapped up in the reminiscing of Lucia about her childhood experiences and traumas. I grieved over what she perceives the events and various trials are teaching her. I fumed at her parents and their treatment of Lucia. The recounting of the family history and stories concerning various relatives added a reality to the narrative.

 

I was so totally wrapped up in this novel that the ending came way too abruptly for me and left me stunned. "What!" my mind screamed. "You can't just stop there, in 1974!"

Thankfully, since this is The Tale of Lucia Grandi; The Early Years there will be another novel and Lucia's story will continue. But, it still ended too unexpectedly for me. I do wish author Susan Speranza had eased me into the ending a bit more gently. Of course, the ending also brought me back to the stunned reality that this is a novel, not a memoir.

 

Bravo, Susan Speranza!  The Tale of Lucia Grandi; The Early Years totally engrossed me and left me wanting more. The writing is so articulate, the characters are so convincing, and the descriptions so real that I was transported into Lucia's life. Apparently, The Tale of Lucia Grandi; The Early Years was formerly published under the title of My Life in Dogs, the Early Years. It was a Quarter finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest and was also on the short list of finalists in the 2012 Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition.

 

Very Highly Recommended - even though I wanted the rest of Lucia's story right now(!).

 

Quotes:

When he realized I was there, he cried, “No, don’t look!” and scooped me up, covering my eyes protectively with his hand as he turned and left the room with me. But it was too late. I had seen, and seeing then became a habit of my life. Never again was I able to avert my eyes, or leave the veil that covers so many truths untouched. So it was on this beautiful Easter Sunday that I awakened to life and to the sad tragedy that is human existence. Location 230-233

She, therefore, lived in fear of the moment when she would be called upon to give an answer or solve a problem or use a skill that required something other than rote memory or sheer force. So she had panic attacks at a young age, and she hated anything and anyone she couldn’t control either through force or memory. It was fitting then that she hated me, for I was quite the opposite, with acute perceptions, an agile mind and a quick tongue that sliced through everyone’s illusions like a deadly sword. I flitted and ran through life; I evaporated and reappeared in front of everyone’s eyes like an insubstantial being. As hard as they tried to grasp me, I always slipped like water through everyone’s controlling hands. Location 336-341

 

I realized early on that I was simply not the child they had hoped for or even liked. There was nothing I could do, no way I could be that would make them love me. I refused to grovel. Eventually, I came to accept that they simply did not love me, and took comfort in the fact that, unlike Lynn, I was free. So I set myself against my parents and in a larger way, I suppose, I set myself against life itself. Perhaps I could accept the fact that my parents did not love me, because I had the love of the one person who had come to mean everything to me in life. My grandfather. Location 374-379

 

Bernard was not my real grandfather. Location 382-382

 

Nothing prepared Bernard for what he was to experience in the trenches of France. Not even life at the orphanage was that brutal. He lived by day and night in a hole in the ground on the Western Front, living like a rat among men and rats in filth and fear. At first, he wasn’t very good with a weapon. He had relied all his life on his fists; but he became more adept at using a rifle and learned to shoot and kill with a ferocity born out of fear and the will to survive. Location 507-510

That night, I learned many things. I learned how little effect I had on anything or anyone around me. That no matter what I did, or said or how I acted or did not act the world would go on much as it always had; I could do nothing to change anything or anyone in the least. That was the night I learned despair. Location 776-778

But oh how wrong both Ruth and Lynn were, as life would prove them. We would all eventually learn the truth of things, that the Bogeyman really does exist and there is something to fear in the night. Location 946-948

But I saw the truth of things early in life. She was terrified. For her, danger lay everywhere. She talked big, but did very little, never venturing from the myriad safe paths in life, until the end when necessity forced her down that most fearsome and dangerous path of all. Location 1414-1416

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from my Kindle from the author and TLC for review purposes. 

Square Peg

Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers 

by Todd Rose with Katherine Ellison
Hyperion, 3/5/2013
Hardcover, 256 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1401324278

Description:

Square Peg illuminates the struggles of millions of bright young children—and their frustrated parents and teachers—who are stuck in a one-size-fits-all school system that fails to approach the student as an individual. Rose shares his own incredible journey from troubled childhood to Harvard, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology along with advances in the field of education, to ultimately provide a roadmap for parents and teachers of kids who are the casualties of America’s antiquated school system.

With a distinguished blend of humor, humility, and practical advice for nurturing children who are a poor fit in conventional schools, Square Peg is a game-changing manifesto that provides groundbreaking insight into how we can get the most out of all the students in our classrooms, and why today’s dropouts could be tomorrow’s innovators.

My Thoughts:

 

Albert Camus said, "We are all special cases." Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers by Todd Rose, with Katherine Ellison, certainly proves that we are all special and unique, especially in the way we approach learning. Square Peg is both a memoir and a personal manifesto. Todd Rose was a bright child who could not seem to avoid trouble and was quickly labeled a delinquent. Part of his problem was the way the educational system reacted to him in a misguided attempt to change or alter his behavior. Rose ended up a high school drop out, but he later went on to become a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 

Rose elaborates on four ideas derived from the study of complex systems and recent neuroscience findings: variability is the rule (our perceptions and reactions are much more dynamic and diverse than previously thought); emotions are serious stuff (children's emotional states do influence their ability to learn); context is key (the circumstances can effect the behavior - this includes labeling children with a disorder); feedback loops determine long-term success or failure (chaos theory and small changes making a difference). At the end of each chapter Rose offers a summary of the "Big Ideas" from that chapter and "Action Items" for parents.

 

It was enlightening to see what Rose's mother and grandmother did right as Rose makes a case for student centered education. He makes it clear that we can't fix a child's behavior. Behavior is an extremely complex system that originates from the interaction of a person's biology, past experiences, and immediate context. If we can understand this complex systems, we could learn to do a better job as teachers and parents in supporting and educating kids, rather than setting them up for failure. Once a child is caught up in a negative feedback loop, it is hard to escape.

 

Medicating ADHD children so they can fit into the environment of school, while beneficial for many, may not completely address the root cause of a child's learning difficulties. The stress children can feel while at school does not help their ability to learn. Finding a way to use current technology to help all children individualize their education could potentially transform education and help many overcome their special needs or limitations.  For example, Rose himself had problems with his short term memory, so the ability to record a multi-step series of instructions with built in reminders would have benefited him enormously.

 

Square Peg is entertaining as well as informative. I appreciate the "Big Ideas" and "Action Items" at the end of each chapter. It is a nice way to summarize what points Rose believes are the most important from all the information and personal anecdotes he provides. Square Peg includes an epilogue with Rose's current research findings, chapter notes, and a bibliography.

 

Very Highly Recommended -  I truly enjoyed this book!

 

Todd Rose is a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, international lecturer, and leading thinker in the field of educational neuroscience. Today, Todd works at the forefront of innovation in learning science and education, contributing new insights about learning variability and helping to design new educational technologies flexible enough to support all students in reaching their full potential.

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has written three books on neuroscience and learning differences, most recently Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, as well as related articles for media including The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic magazine.

 

 

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher and TLC for review purposes. 

TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS for Square Peg:

Monday, March 4th:  Life Unfocused
Tuesday, March 5th:  Two Bears Farm and the Three Cubs
Wednesday, March 6th:  She Treads Softly
Thursday, March 7th:  Overstuffed
Friday, March 8th:  Book Club Classics!
Monday, March 11th:  Family Volley
Tuesday, March 12th:  Attention Deficit Whatever
Wednesday, March 13th:  Misbehavin’ Librarian
Thursday, March 14th:  Positive Thinking and ADHD
Friday, March 15th:  Smart Kids with LD
Monday, March 18th:  Earnest Parenting
Tuesday, March 19th:  Pragmatic Mom
Wednesday, March 20th:  Book Snob
Thursday, March 21st:  Luxury Reading
Friday, March 22nd:  Susan Heim on Parenting guest post
Monday, March 25th:  There’s a Book
Wednesday, March 27th:  Stiletto Storytime

Replacement Child

Replacement Child: A Memoir by Judy L. Mandel
Seal Press; March 5, 2013

Trade Paperback; 320 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1580054768
http://www.replacementchild.com/Home.html

Description:

Judy L. Mandel was born into a family crippled by grief. But it would be years before she would discover the shocking circumstances of their loss.
Replacement Child tells the true story of a horrifying accident: A plane crashes into a family’s home, leaving one daughter severely burned and another dead. The death of the child leaves a hole in the family that threatens to tear it apart. In an attempt to fill the painful gap, the parents give birth to a “replacement child.”
In this powerful story of love and lies, family and hope, Judy L. Mandel tells the story of being the child brought into the world to provide “a salve for the burns.” As a child, she unwittingly rides the deep and hidden currents of her family’s grief—until her discovery of this family secret, years later, changes her life forever, forcing her to confront the complex layers of her relationships with her father, mother, and sister.

My Thoughts:

Replacement Child: A Memoir by Judy L. Mandel opens with a newspaper story:

"ELIZABETH, N.J. —Elizabeth’s second aviation holocaust in thirty-seven days today had claimed at least twenty-eight lives . . . The ship plunged into the two houses near the southeast corner of South and Williamson streets at approximately 3:45 pm. Before firemen could subdue the roaring, orange flames that leaped nearly 100 feet into the rainy sky, three dwellings and a garage had been destroyed and a fourth house was damaged severely. Nearly a score of persons were homeless. Killed on the plane were Captain (Thomas J.) Reid and all twenty-two others aboard. Police . . . announced the following list of Elizabeth persons missing and feared dead: DONNA MANDEL, 7 years old, 310 Williamson Street . . . "

Judy was a replacement child, a child who is conceived to replace a deceased child. In her family's case, Donna, her deceased older sister, died in a horrific accident. A plane crashed into her family's apartment building. The building caught fire and her mother was able to save one of her daughters, 2 year old Linda, but had to leave the oldest daughter, 7 year old Donna, to die in the fire. Linda, the daughter who was saved from the fire, was seriously injured from major burns over her whole body. She was so scarred and disfigured from the fire that she had to suffer though many reconstructive surgeries throughout her life.

Judy was born into this family that was very much focused on Linda's care and ongoing surgeries while the memory of Donna, the deceased daughter, perpetually hangs over the whole family. Judy longed to be loved and accepted, but both of her parents seemed to keep her at a distance, especially her father, as if loving her or displaying any affection would tarnish the memory of her sister or take care away from Linda. This occurred even to the point that her parents stop introducing her or referring to her as their "beautiful daughter, Judy," something any proud parent might say, because they thought it might be insulting to Linda. 

As an adult, Judy decided to research the accident, the plane crash that no one in her family ever discussed openly and honestly with her, to try to understand the dysfunctional dynamics in her family. It always seemed to her that there were untold secrets, parts of the story that no one told her. Judy writes:

"I tell her I want to go back and see the scene of the crime—the crash site.

'Why would you want to do that?' she is incredulous.

I try to explain that since our parents died I’ve had a nagging feeling that there is something left undone in my own life. It may have something to do with the accident, I say, and going there in the flesh feels suddenly important to me. There have always been missing pieces, for me, in the story. Up until now, I’ve dismissed the gaps as irrelevant to my life—but now I suspect it is those missing pieces that may hold the seeds of my own truth about my ambivalence toward my father, my troubles with men, and my schizophrenic attitude toward risk and safety. I’m hoping the trip back will help me understand more about their lives, and my own." (pg.15)

Judy tells her story in chapters that follow several timelines, her childhood, her family before she was born leading up to the accident, and her current life. In this way she composes complete pictures of her family and how they were dealing with their lives and the aftermath of the tragic accident. Although Judy didn't learn the term "replacement child" until later in her life, it seems she always understood that she was there to replace Donna and yet she could never live up to the memory of her deceased sister.

Her parents inability to openly show Judy love and affection clearly resulted in damage to her self esteem and made her become a risk taker. She says, "By the time I was an adolescent, I saw it as my sacred duty to prove the world was a safer place than my parents believed, that I could take risks and survive." But her parent's solicitous manner toward Linda and her health also changed Linda. Judy writes: "My sister Linda couldn’t break away from thinking of my father as her knight, the one who made her feel like she could do anything she set her mind to. I had experienced a different side of my father growing up. His code with me was that I was the daughter who was blessed, who didn’t need his praise."

This is a re-written re-release of this memoir that was apparently first published in 2009. It is a powerful story about how unspoken family dynamics and secrets can influence people their whole lives. Certainly there are still examples of people losing a child and having a replacement child, whether they admit to that concept or not. It would be extremely hard for any child to be born into a family under that moniker and then not receive the love, acceptance and affection any child needs. Judy's struggles with relationships as an adult prove this.

Highly Recommended

Excerpt 

Excerpted from Replacement Child: A Memoir by Judy L. Mandel. Available from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2013.
  

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Netgalley for review purposes.

Corporeality

Corporeality by Hollis Seamon
Able Muse Press, 1/31/2013
Paperback, 204 pages
ISBN-13: 9781927409039

http://hollisseamon.com/

Description:

In Corporeality, Hollis Seamon’s latest fiction collection, we meet the cat lady, the professor dealing with a plagiarist while coping with personal hardships, sibling rivalry of the unnaturally cursed kind, the dog that goes beyond everyday dog sense and scent to protect its owners. These are some of the eclectic characters and settings that make Corporeality irresistible and difficult to put down once you’ve started reading. Like her preceding collection Body Work and mystery novel Flesh, this book is a testament to Seamon’s ample gifts as a storyteller.

My Thoughts:

Corporeality by Hollis Seamon is a collection of short stories that follow the state of mind of various quirky and beleaguered characters.

The collection features 10 stories (in my advanced readers copy):

"SUTHY" - a 17 year old and a 15 year old are terminal and in hospice care with SUTHY: "Somebody Up There Hates You" syndrome.

"Annus Mirabilis" -  a professor who walked out on teaching to offer Bread and Books from the front porch of her home but troubles follow her there

"Leave It Lie" -  garbage men Gary and Echo become heroes when they find two babies in a garbage bag and rush them to the hospital.

"Fatty Lumpkin vs. The Reaper: Rounds One, Two and Three" - an old, fat, blind, but very intuitive terrier protects his owner from the grim reaper

"Gigantina" - three sisters, one strangely deformed, experience sibling rivalry

"The Plagiarist" - a professor deals with an obvious case of plagiarism while experiencing her own personal problems

"Like a Virus" -  A woman with agoraphobia meets a paranoid neighbor

"The Trojan Cat: A Drama in Three Acts" - a woman rescues her first cat, which leads to another, and another

"Praise Be to an Afflicting God" - two misfit neighbors and friends suspect that life on their street is changing

"Cabbage Night" - three girls fear their neighbor is killing their mother

 

This outstanding collection is masterfully written and the characters Seaman astutely creates are unforgettable. Several of the stories evoke raw emotions ranging from fear, anger, terror, and heartbreak. Most of the characters could be anyone you might see, a family you hear about in passing, or the neighbors you wonder about. My favorites were SUTHY, Annus Mirabilis, Leave It Lie, Fatty Lumpkin vs. The Reaper, and The Trojan Cat, but all the stories are certainly worth reading in this notable collection.

 

Very Highly Recommended - especially for fans of short stories 

 

No quotes since I had an advanced reading copy.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Able Muse Press and Netgalley for review purposes.