from whimsy to the deep

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: This book has a whimsical feel right from the beginning.  From before the beginning, actually: from the seating chart at the front.  That whimsy quickly gets deep, though, as we meet the people around the table.  The bride and groom, their parents, siblings, grandparents, and other assorted friends and relations who have gathered to celebrate the nuptials scheduled for the following day, all have their own dramas going on.  In that way, this reads more like a series of intersecting short stories, as each individual or small group of characters is really pursuing their own storyline.  Infidelities are revealed, mortality is contemplated, and both love and passion flower.  So, no, this is not a whimsical story, but it is a good one, and full of feeling.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

sometimes it takes a while to find yourself

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Willa is a very bland, sort of get-along-with-everyone character.  She goes from being dominated by her mother, who has some kind of anger management issue, or is possibly bipolar, or something, to being dominated by her both her first and second husbands, both of whom definitely have anger management issues.  She's got skills (I was shocked about 2/3 of the way through the book when she mentions that she speaks 5 languages) but recently gave her job teaching ESL to follow her second husband into retirement in Arizona, where she identifies most with the lone saguaro cactus in front of her house.

When she gets a call that her son's ex-girlfriend (who she never met) has been shot and needs help, she gets on a plane and heads to Baltimore to take care of her and her 9-year-old daughter.  Some may think it odd to fly 2000 miles across the country to care for a woman you've never met (and her daughter), but Willa has always been open to suggestion, not to mention that she's totally bored.  But in Baltimore, she finally finds a purpose, people who need her, and a community.  The only question is whether she also finds the strength to break from her former go-along-to-get-along life and stay in the place and with the people who actually make her happy.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

crisis of faith

Southernmost by Silas House
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: In an editorial in today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne writes that "[m]any young people [have come] to regard religion as 'judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical and too political.'"  Asher Sharp couldn't agree more.  He's a Holy Roller pastor who's having a crisis of faith.  He's been harboring some long-standing guilt about how he and his mother treated his brother when he came out as gay, and when he's forced to turn away a gay couple seeking shelter in a flood, his crisis comes to a head.  In trying to accept the two men into his church, he loses his pulpit, and in trying to bring his more liberal thinking into his own home, he loses his wife and son.

Faced with a protracted custody battle, Asher kidnaps his son, Justin, and spirits him away to Key West to find Asher's long-estranged brother, Luke.  What follows is... not much.  Justin and Asher find a home at a small resort hotel on the island, and Asher works as a general handyman.  But neither of them do much, except think deep thoughts about God, and faith, and the church, and judgment, and holiness.  This is a very introspective, slow-moving, but beautifully written book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.