Treadmill Reads: Conversations With the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer

Synopsis (Goodreads):  Everyone seems to be getting on with their lives except Maggie. At 27, she’s still working at the local coffee house while her friends are getting married, having babies, and building careers. Even Olivia, Maggie’s best friend from childhood, is getting married to her doctor boyfriend. Maggie, on the other hand, lives with her dog Solo and has no romantic prospects save for the torch she carries for Domenic, the busboy. Though Maggie and Olivia have been best friends since their fattie grade school years, Olivia’s since gone the gastric-bypass surgery route in hopes of obtaining the elusive size two, the holy grail for fat girls everywhere. So now Olivia’s thin, blond, and betrothed, and Maggie’s the fat bridesmaid. Ain’t life grand? In this inspiring debut novel, Maggie speaks to women everywhere who wish for just once that they could forget about their weight.

My take:   Maggie is every young woman who ever fought the weight battle – every young woman who has never felt comfortable with her body. I understood Maggie and I cheered for her as she started to figure things out with her best friend, her love life, and her job situation.

Conversations With the Fat Girl is filled with interesting characters. From Maggie’s family to her co-workers it was easy to find comparable characters in my own life. I liked most and understood the reason for them all. This is a novel begging to be on the small or large screen. Thank you Liza Palmer for writing Maggie’s story. Once upon a time I was in her shoes.

There’s a reader’s guide included and you can find more information about the author here. I’m looking forward to reading Ms. Palmer’s other books.

• Title:  Conversations With the Fat Girl
• Author:  Liza Palmer
• Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
• Published:  September 2005 – 5 Spot
• Source:  I bought it

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Title: The Postmistress

Author: Sarah Blake

Genre: Fiction

About: (Goodreads synopsis): Filled with stunning parallels to today’s world, The Postmistress is a sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women-and of two countries torn apart by war.
On the eve of the United States’s entrance into World War II in 1940, Iris James, the postmistress of Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, does the unthinkable: She doesn’t deliver a letter.…more

My thoughts: An interesting idea for a novel and the author explains how she got the idea at the end of the book.  Also included is information on her research which I appreciated since I wanted to know more about the war time press.

I’m not sure why but I just didn’t connect with the characters on the home front. I know they were connected in that they moved the plot but there was just something about them that made them seem more like caricatures.   Maybe it has to do with the era, I’m not sure.  Sometimes it seemed that their dialogue was trying too hard to sound “of the era”.

The part I liked most was when Frankie interviewed refugees on the trains heading west to France, Spain and Portugal.  She recorded their voices telling their names and where they were going. It was haunting to read this section of the book.

I’ve read novels about the people (mostly children) who were sent out of London during the Blitz but never one that involved the people living in London not knowing each night if bombs would drop on them – or if their home would be intact when they came out of the bomb shelter. Their emotions were palpable.  I think Sarah Blake depicted the fear and desperation of the refugees as well as the people in London in a completely believable way.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Source: I bought it.

The Bells: A Novel by Richard Harvell

The Bells is a novel that is larger than life – starting with a bell so large and loud that people who heard it were forever changed.  A young boy lived with his mother who could neither hear nor speak.  They lived mainly in the bell tower and she rang the bell morning, noon and night. For some reason the boy was unaffected by the bell – except for one thing.  He had an acute sense of hearing.  One day the man who turned out to be his father found out that the boy could speak.  The boy could ruin him with what he knew so he took him out of the village and threw him in the river. The boy’s father didn’t know that two men (monks) witnessed the incident. When the man left the scene one of the monks quickly saved the boy.  They took him back to the abbey with them where it was eventually discovered that he could also sing. That discovery brought life-changing consequences.

The novel moves from a mountain village to an abbey to Vienna’s finest concert hall. I don’t want to reveal any more of the plot because it is such a fascinating story and really should be discovered through reading it yourself.

The Bells is written in three acts – much like a work of music.  As I read I couldn’t help thinking this novel would make a wonderful opera. It has heart-breaking drama, humor, and moments that made me want to cheer out loud. Harvell reveals to the reader various aspects of certain musicians  in the 1700s. There are historical characters (the composer Gluck, for one) that figure into the story.  The author’s note at the end of the book points out more facts and the research behind the book.

If you’re looking for a unique novel I would say read The Bells.  I’m glad I did.

You can hear more about the novel here.  Diane Rehm interviewed the author in Sept. 2010.

Show Me 5 Saturday – Your Roots Are Showing by Elise Chidley

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1 Title:  Your Roots Are Showing by Elise Chidley

2 Words that describe the book:   Lizzie’s changes

3 Settings or characters:

*  Lizzie Buckley, in the throes of postpartum depression, has little interest in her husband or life in general.

*  Tessa, Lizzie’s best friend since they were small, is her biggest supporter.  She won’t let Lizzie fall any deeper into the abyss of depression.  She gets her started on the process of climbing out.  Everyone needs a friend like Tessa.

*  Roger, Lizzie’s father-in-law.  Always her fan, he truly hopes she and his son can make things work.  He’s a bit of a character but he seemed genuinely in Lizzie’s corner.  I thought he was the one person who gave her hope.

4 Things I liked/disliked about the book:

*  I loved Elise Chidley’s way of telling the story so that it was easy to sympathize with almost every character.

*  The humor was laugh-out-loud at times.  That said, this is not a fluff book.  It addresses serious issues faced by many women at one time or another.  It was an emotional read but not a depressing one.

*  I liked how Chidley showed Lizzie’s experience of starting to run, starting therapy, dealing with her food issues, etc.  I could imagine myself feeling the same way as Lizzie.

*  I didn’t like that Lizzie and James seemed to give up too easily from the start (that’s not a spoiler).  I guess their feelings were so hurt they just turned inward.  Maybe that’s not so unusual.

5 Stars or less for the rating:   4.5/5 stars.  I recommend it.

Back of the book: Lizzie Buckley is having doubts about her picture-perfect world.  She does love her country estate, precocious three-year-old twins, and handsome husband, James.  But nobody warned her about postpartum depression and the toll it would take on her marriage.  Or how she’d fantasize about chucking it all for a box of chocolates and an uninterrupted bath.

Lizzie vents these frustrations in an e-mail and her life is shattered: James gets the message by mistake.  Lizzie soon finds herself uprooting her children to start over in a ramshackle garden cottage.  Now facing life – and the twins – alone, Lizzie struggles to reinvent herself and forget about her soon-to-be ex.  But when thoughts of James still haunt her, she begins to wonder if the best part of marriage starts after the fairy tale ends…

Show Me 5 Saturday – Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle

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1 Title:  Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle

2 Words that describe the book:  Family reunion

3 Settings or characters:

*  Mira Zielinski – wife of Max and mother of Katya, Ivan, and Irina.

*  Katya – the totally together, on top of everything wife, mother, daughter, sister.  She’s about ready to crack.

*  Irina – the youngest child of Mira and Max who arrives home with two big surprises

4 Things I liked/disliked about the book:

*  I liked how real Kristina Riggle’s characters are -the Zielinski siblings especially.

*  I enjoyed how while reading it I felt like I was watching a movie.  The descriptions and dialogue were great.  I really liked the anniversary party scene.

*  Each chapter is about or from a different character’s perspective.  The details revealed about the characters filled in a lot.

*  I liked how the title worked into the plot at what seemed like the right time.

5 Stars or less for the rating:  4/5

Back of the book:  For Mirabelle Zielinski’s children, happiness always seems to be just out of reach.  Her polished oldest daughter, Katya, clings to a stale marriage with a workaholic husband and three spoiled children.  Her son, Ivan, so creative, is a down-in-the-dumps songwriter with the worst taste in women.  And the “baby”, impulsive Irina, who lives life on a whim, is now reluctantly pregnant and hitched to a man who is twice her age.  On the weekend of their parents’ anniversary party, lies will be revealed, hearts will be broken . . . but love will also be found.  And the biggest shock may come from Mirabelle herself, because she has a secret that will change everything.

Where The River Runs by Patti Callahan Henry

Back of the book:  Meridy Dresden was once a free-spirited, fun-loving girl. All that changed when the boy she loved was killed in a tragic fire. Since then, she alone has carried the burden of a terrible secret. Years later, married to a wonderful man and mother of a teenage son, she is shocked to learn that a childhood friend is being blamed for that long-ago fire. Fearful but determined, Meridy returns to the South Carolina Lowcountry and summons the courage to make a decision that may destroy her well-ordered life, her family’s reputation, her contented marriage, and everything she’s worked so hard to protect… including her heart.

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I was pulled into Patti Callahan Henry’s touching novel from the first page.  Meridy Dresden has reached a point in her life where she is known among her husband’s friends as “perfect Meridy” – the perfect wife, mother, friend.  The problem is she feels like a fraud.  Ever since the tragic night where life changed forever she has tried to be good.  Her husband knows nothing about her life before they met; her son is grown and ready to leave for college; and her best friend was just divorced by Meridy’s husband’s boss.  Things are happening that are out of her control.

Meridy goes home to South Carolina to write a curriculum of the Gullah culture for her local school.  Repressed memories return that force her to face the past. With the help of Tulu, her family’s former housekeeper, she learns how to come to grips with what happened twenty-five years earlier – the night of the tragic fire.  Tulu teaches her the meaning of Gullah proverbs which leads to finding the truth in her past and helps her to understand what is important going forward.

I really liked this novel.  It was easy for me to relate to Meridy in a few ways.  I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the lessons learned. Where The River Runs is the second book I’ve read by Patti Callahan Henry and I look forward to reading more.