MY LATEST SUMMER book find is a winner: a chilling murder mystery with a secret sisterhood of privileged teens at its center. My own path to finding this gem of a thriller was pretty twisted, too. [click to continue…]
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A FEW YEARS back, my family made its own venture into the wilderness, moving from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the expansive green hills of the Hudson Valley. It’s paradise, yet the climate where we live can be wretched and unforgiving, the land hilly and full of stones. We marvel aloud at the tenacity and sheer strength of this area’s early settlers, the people who cleared all the trees, built the stone walls that still stand. We are awed by what they accomplished, and quite certain we, with our reliance on power tools, the internet, and central heating, would not have a prayer of replicating their achievements. [click to continue…]
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IF YOU’VE SPENT much time here, you already know how we TSP sisters feel about the power of memoir, and Mary Gordon’s layered remembrance of her mother is an outstanding example of the genre. [click to continue…]
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HOW’S THIS FOR A PLOT? Two couples meet, fall in love–each with the other’s partner–dissolve their existing marriages, switch partners, and marry again. Wild enough. But now imagine that within these two fragile families are four young girls, two each, all close in age. Two of them, named Jenny and Jane, even share the same birthday, one year apart. The four girls are all now sisters, of a sort. What sort of sad, strange family is this? [click to continue…]
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IN THE WINTER, it’s all about the nightstand: That’s where my teetering, tottering pile of reading material and wishful thinking resides most of the year. (Where I live, winter IS five months long, and that pile is tall.) But now, as the sun finally shines more hours than not, and the end of school approaches, and with that transition, the prospect of lazy afternoons spent–dare I dream?– reading, begins to tantalize. [click to continue…]
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