This is a story about a woman named Grace Lawson who picks up her photos from a local print shop only to find there is a picture in the set that wasn’t taken with her camera. What’s strange about the picture is that when she looks closely at it, she thinks she recognizes a younger version of her husband Jack in it. And what makes it stranger still is that the woman he’s standing next to in the photo has a giant red X marked over her. When Grace takes the photo home and shows it to her husband to see if he knows anything about it, he reacts very strangely to it, claiming it isn’t him in the photo; then, excusing himself to take a phone call, he leaves the room and never comes back.

Grace is panicked. She’s part of a good marriage — her husband wouldn’t just leave her. She can’t believe a simple photo would just make him disappear. So she goes to the police, but they don’t believe her when she says her husband is in danger. They think he’s left her for another woman, perhaps the woman in the photo, and when she receives an ill-timed phone call from her husband telling her he needs some space just as she’s talking to the police, she knows they’ve written her off as the unsuspecting, cheated wife. But Grace knows her husband and can tell from the way he’s worded his phone message that he’s telling her he needs help and that the police shouldn’t be involved.

So Grace will have to find him on her own. And as she searches for him, she starts to learn that the photograph is much more dangerous than she realized. Her husband has already gone missing, and soon she receives the message loud and clear that she and her children are next if she doesn’t stop searching for him leave the photo alone.

And, as is usually the case with Coben novels, a whole cast of other characters (people in the neighborhood, long lost family members, even mobsters) become intertwined with the event depicted in that simple photograph of the crossed out girl and Grace’s younger husband. You get the sense that it’s a very small world out there.

I liked this book, but not as much as Coben’s other books. I felt the story clipped along nicely and that the suspense was thrilling enough to keep me reading through the night. I didn’t particularly care for the ending — I felt it came together too loosely in the end to justify all the connections between the characters. But hey, Coben isn’t a bestselling author for nothing. He can tell a story and he can tell it well. There’s just the right amount of gruesome violence, thrilling cat and mouse scenes, and twists along the way.

Addie Downs has been an overweight girl her entire life. Years of eating in secrecy to hide her frustrations and pains leads to nearly 350 pounds by the time she’s 30 years old. It’s not like her pain isn’t real, as her life has been full of tragedy — in high school, her fit, popular brother is injured in a car accident that leaves him severely brain damaged, her father dies of a brain aneurysm when she is 18 years old, and her mother dies of cancer only a year later. Addie has spent her life hidden away in her home where no one would make fun of her and she can lose herself in her art and food.

The only person who ever managed to draw Addie out of her shell was her best friend Valerie Adler. Valerie moved into Addie’s neighborhood the summer they were 8 years old. A child of divorced parents, she lives with her mother, a beautiful woman whose life revolves around staying slim and finding men to support her. Val is full of life and ideas. She’s not afraid of anything or of speaking her mind. She’s the yin to Addie’s yang, and they become the best of friends until they reach high school and Val becomes a cheerleader and starts hanging around the popular kids. While Val doesn’t abandon Addie (she still invites her along to things), Addie knows she doesn’t belong with that crowd.

One night, Val’s invited to a party at a popular boy’s house. She brings Addie along, but ends up leaving her to herself as she parties with her new friends. Just as Addie’s had enough and goes to find Val and drag her home, Val shows up ready to leave — but she’s looking pale and her hair is messed and her clothes are disheveled. Addie discovers Val was raped by a boy from their school, and, determined to do the right thing for her friend, she tells her mother. But Val doesn’t want to make a scene, and she doesn’t want to lose her new friends, so she denies Addie’s accusation, and accuses her of being jealous. It is the moment their friendship ends. After graduation, Val moves out to California and Addie has to deal with her family’s tragedies, and they don’t see each other again.

Over the years, Addie grows bigger and bigger until one day she decides she’s had enough. She puts herself on a strict diet during the day, and knocks herself out at night with sleeping pills so she won’t binge eat anymore. She takes up swimming and goes faithfully every day. Over the course of a year, Addie loses weight and becomes a normal-sized person. She’s healthier and happier, and she’s determined to make a better life for herself until one night the doorbell rings and her former best friend Val is there with blood on her coat and a plea for help because she thinks she’s just killed the boy from high school who raped her. What follows is a hilarious adventure as the girls find themselves on the run from the local police chief.

I enjoyed this book, though I really didn’t like the character of Valerie much. She irritated me with her vanity and stupidity. I know that Addie was so self-conscious that she held onto that friendship because no one else was interested in being her friend, but Addie comes across as a very smart person, even in her youth. I couldn’t see that she’d take someone as silly as Val very seriously, but I guess desperation makes people willing to put up with a lot.

Apart from Val’s character, I thought the book was very funny and well-written. I liked the way Weiner jumps back and forth between past and present as she tells the story of these girls’ friendship, and why they ended up the way they did. I liked the realism in the characters’ observations of life. I appreciated that there are side characters with their own stories and Weiner weaves them into the main plot and that everything comes together well.

I’ve always been a fan of Weiner’s (except for Goodnight Nobody which I just couldn’t get into, though I may give it another try in the future), and this novel is a lot like her other novels (main character is usually an overweight girl looking to find a happier life). I think I’d like to see her write something different in the future though. I think it’s time she went beyond the “write what you know” mantra and explored new ideas for main characters.

Robert Langdon is back with another mystery to solve. His good friend, the very wealthy philanthropist Peter Solomon, is hosting an event at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, and his keynote speaker has fallen ill. Robert is asked to fill in at the last minute, and is flown by private jet to Washington, where he is soon to discover that his friend actually did not invite him, but he is in urgent need of his help. Because instead of a glitzy event attended by Washington’s elite, Robert arrives to discover Peter’s hand, sawn off and placed strategically beneath the Capitol’s dome, with symbols tattooed on the fingertips containing a message for him to decipher. Robert realizes that he has been manipulated by a very sick man with the resources and cunning necessary to bring him to D.C. on an impossible quest to locate The Lost Symbol, an fabled icon of Masonic mythology. If Robert doesn’t help this man find what he’s looking for, Peter will die. Then, to make the matter even more urgent and mystifying, he is greeted with the arrival of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top agent, who takes Robert into custody and claims that he must do as this sick man requests, or the entire nation’s security will be compromised.

This all seemed a little familiar. And that’s because I could have been reading The Da Vinci Code instead. The similarities are many. TDVC: Old friend of Langdon’s found dead in museum with cryptic message pointing to clues which sets our symbologist hero on a seemingly impossible quest. TLS: Old friend of Langdon’s hand is found in museum with cryptic message (literally) pointing to clues which sets our symbologist hero on a seemingly impossible quest. TDVC: The security of the entire world depends on Robert keeping sensitive information from coming to light. TLS: The security of the entire world depends on Robert keeping sensitive information from coming to light. TDVC: rich with historical information about Opus Dei and architectural and art history. TLS: rich with historical information about the Masons and architectural and art history. TDVC: contains complex code to break. TLS: contains complex code to break. TDVC: Robert is teamed up with beautiful, intelligent scientist who has access to critical information. TLS: Robert is teamed up with beautiful, intelligent scientist who has access to critical information. Both books feature villains who are not averse to murdering to get what they need to achieve a goal that is “bigger than us all” and who would die for their causes. Both books take place in the same amount of time — one long, thrilling night.

Yes, Brown reused his formula here, and when you consider how wildly successful The Da Vinci Code was, who can blame him? Does it detract from the story and make it less of a good read? A teeny bit, yes, but perhaps only to those of us who read a book to appreciate its writing as much as its story. But does it matter in the end? Not really. This is still a good book. I appreciated the history in it, and, like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons before it, I found myself wanting to stop at certain points as I read to go look up things on the Internet to see if Brown really was accurate in the information he presented. So while I did find the story formulaic, and a few of the characters to be underdeveloped and underused, I am still impressed with the effort that is present within the details. This was not a book that was put together in a hurry. In fact, this is a book that was long overdue for fans of Brown, especially following the success of The Da Vinci Code. Originally intended to be published in 2006 under the title The Solomon Key, this novel was pushed back so Brown could keep working on it (and probably due in part to his legal issues at the time). I can appreciate that time was taken to make the novel better, despite the pressure he no doubt felt to publish so quickly after the bestseller that was The Da Vinci Code.

I can’t say that this is his best work, but it’s still a good read and a page-turner. Thanks to Victor at Special Ops Media and Doubleday for the review copy. (more…)

The Ten-Year Nap tells the stories of 4 New Yorkers who chose to be stay at home moms, and how, 10 years later, they are faced with needing to decide what to do with the rest of their lives now that their children are in school and no longer needing them the way they used to.

Most central of the women is Amy, who once worked as a lawyer before the birth of her son. She and her husband Leo decided she would stay at home and raise their son in his most formative years, rather than paying someone else to do it. Now that her son is 10 years old, she’s finding that she’s not as essential to him as she once was, and that staying home has become a financial strain on the family.

Amy’s friend Jill once worked in the film industry, but was let go from her job right around the time she and her husband decided to start a family. After years of fertility problems, they decided to adopt a baby girl from Romania, and that Jill would stay home and raise her. But Jill finds that she doesn’t really like being a SAHM, especially now that she senses her daughter has some special needs that will require extra time and attention.

Roberta was once an “artist”, but her work never got the recognition she wanted. She ends up turning to puppetry and crafts to make some money, though she thinks it is beneath her. When she and her husband start a family, she decides to stay home and raise them because child care would be too expensive to pay for on her small earnings. Now, as her children are needing her less, she’s feeling like a failure because she not only has lost her artistic drive, but she no longer has the desire or motivation to find something she’d be interested in doing.

Karen is a brilliant mathematician married to a successful banker. Growing up, she watched her parents work so hard at low-paying jobs to provide a life for their family. While Karen loves math and enjoys going to job interviews where companies offer her large salaries to work for them, she always turns down the offers so she can stay at home with her sons because her financial situation is one where she doesn’t have to work, so she won’t. (more…)

Jeez, it took me forever to read a book! I read this one in bits and pieces, a few pages at a time before going to bed. It’s a long book, so it took a while, and there was a week or two when my 7 month old son decided he didn’t want to sleep well and would cry and cry to be held and rocked to sleep, so I’d spend time soothing him to sleep in the rocker only to have him wake up and start screaming again the moment I transferred him to his crib. And it would go on for a couple of hours like that. Ah, children.

But finally, finally, finally… I finished this book. Not that I minded it taking me so long, as it was a very nice story to escape into for a half hour at a time. This is the kind of story that makes you feel like you’ve struck up friendships with its characters, and are happy to sit back and hear a little about their lives. I’ve said it before: Maeve Binchy novels are character-driven stories about everyday, ordinary people living everyday, ordinary lives, and it just goes to show you what a wonderful writer Binchy is that she can make you care about them and stick through 432 pages of their everyday, ordinary happenings that somehow seem so interesting and comfortable in the hands of a gifted story teller.

I love Maeve Binchy. And I loved Heart and Soul. The story centers around employees of a heart clinic run by a cardiologist named Clara Casey. The novel follows these people and their family and friends through their lives as they connect to each other. Some of the people are characters we have met before in other Binchy novels, which is always fun. That’s another testament to what a great character writer Binchy is — when you get so attached to a character that discovering they’ve “lived on” in another novel is such a treat.

A must read for Binchy fans, and well worth a read for those who have yet to have the pleasure. (more…)

This book is a treat for those of us who read Weiner’s Good In Bed, and want to revisit Cannie Shapiro and see what happened to her little baby girl, Joy. Picking up 12 years later, we discover that Joy has grown into a rebellious but smart young woman preparing for her bat mitzvah, and that Cannie and her husband Peter are preparing to have a baby via a surrogate. Due to Joy’s premature birth and health problems, Cannie has been super protective and extra attentive towards Joy as she’s grown up, which, for a 12 year old girl, means that Joy finds her mom stifling and such an embarrassment, something that only adds more to the insecurities of an awkward teen with hearing aids entering the trials and tribulations of the seventh grade social strata. So when Joy finds out that the popular girls at school read her mother’s book, Big Girls Don’t Cry, and suddenly think Joy is worthy of their attention, she decides to read her mother’s book as well to find out why.

What Joy discovers is that her mother’s book is largely autobiographical, and it portrays her mother as a promiscuous young woman who got pregnant by accident and never wanted the baby. Joy suddenly starts to question her existence and how much she is loved and wanted. Sigh… only a teenager could still wonder if a mother who drives her to and picks her up from school every day, asks after her, gives her pretty much everything she wants and says “I love you” constantly could actually really love and want her. I really think Weiner did a nice job of conveying the insecurities of young girls these days through Joy’s character.

Told in alternating points of view between Cannie and Joy, we are able to see how even the most loving, stable family can have their share of problems and secrets to shake things up from time to time. Families aren’t perfect. Mothers aren’t perfect. Children don’t turn out the way you hope they will, despite all the efforts. Sometimes there’s no such thing as “normal.” I really enjoyed this book and the relationships portrayed in it. I think I could have enjoyed it more if I had reread Good In Bed beforehand to refresh my memory of Cannie’s life pre-Joy, but the book stands well on its own. And while most of Weiner’s books tend to be on the lighter side, there are some pretty heavy themes in this novel; I think that since I recently became a mother myself, a lot of them hit home more emotionally than they would have pre-motherhood. A few tears were shed, and that’s not something chick lit tends to do to me. I suppose that’s why the official title of this book is Certain Girls: A Novel. I think Weiner hoped this novel would be taken more seriously and rise above the chick lit “bubble gum” eschewers, though the bright pink cover certainly wouldn’t help that cause.

In the end, I found this to be another good novel from a good writer.

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Ellie Graham married well — her husband, Andy, is handsome, smart, successful and rich.  He’s also polite, thoughtful and respectful. He’s a perfect catch. He’s just not Leo, the one that “got away”. Leo was Ellie’s boyfriend before she met Andy, and while he was also handsome and smart, he was not willing to get married. So they broke up and Ellie met Andy, got over Leo, and moved on. Or so she thought. A few years later, Ellie and Leo literally cross paths in a (how apropros) crosswalk, and they catch up over coffee. Turns out the sexual tension is still alive and well between these two, and the attraction remains very strong. Not wanting to lose touch again, Leo gets Ellie the job opportunity of a lifetime — photographing a huge celebrity to accompany the interview Leo is writing for a popular magazine.  As the two work together on the job, the sparks fly and Ellie starts wondering if she ended up with the wrong person after all.

I love Emily Giffin’s books, particularly her Something Borrowed and Something Blue novels, so I was looking forward to reading this latest of hers.  I liked the book, though it was much more somber and subdued than her other novels. This novel focuses on marriage and fidelity, and the title of the novel had me thinking the whole way through that the main character “settled” for the man she married because (as the saying goes), she couldn’t be with the one she really loves. This made me like the novel a little less, because I didn’t like that idea. However, Emily Giffin handled the issues very well in this novel, and the actions of the characters were not predictable. In fact, I was surprised with how things progressed between the characters, which is always a good thing in my opinion — to be surprised by the plot. The story turned out well and the writing was strong, though a little long-winded at times. Overall, a good read. (more…)

Finally read a book! It helps when you’re up late at night feeding the baby and have time on your hands (and your son is a lazy eater and takes his time).

This is the novel that inspired the movie that came out this last year (starring Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson), though it is not the same story at all. The book is completely different from the movie, apart from the names of characters and the fact that Davy is a jumper. Of course, the book is better than the movie (it always is, isn’t it?). This is also the prequel to Reflex, which was another book I enjoyed reading, and which, in my opinion, is the better of the two.

Davy Rice is a troubled teen. He’s been abandoned by his mother, and is physically abused by his alcoholic father. One day, as his father prepares to give Davy an especially brutal beating, something happens — Davy vanishes and reappears in the safety of the local library, a place he has always felt safe. At first, Davy thinks he dreamt it all, and that the stress of the beating is blocking his memory. He decides to run away and make it on his own in New York City. On his way there, he hitch hikes with a trucker who has some nasty plans in mind for Davy that make a beating from his father preferable. As the trucker starts to carry out the plan, Davy vanishes once again and finds himself back in the safety of the library. This is no mental blockage — Davy realises he can teleport, or “jump”, and he begins to practice his new skill, learning that he can only jump to places he has been before and can picture vividly in his mind.

Davy’s new skill gives him some purpose in life. While he uses his skill to teleport into the vault of a bank and rob a million dollars, he does also use the money to support himself as he performs some good deeds; for example, helping the homeless or teleporting around the world to catch terrorists who have hijacked planes. It is certainly interesting to think about what life as a teleporter would be like. No need to spend hours and money on transportation; you can teleport yourself home anytime you want to take a quick nap, make a snack, or use your own bathroom; nothing could stop you from going where to want to go.

I enjoyed this book, and I thought the story was well plotted, though not necessarily well-written. Some of the dialogue was awkward and the character development of Davy and his girlfriend, Millie, could have been a little better as I found their relationship and the way they spoke to one another to be a little too contrived at times. And, not that it impacted the story at all, but (my pet peeve) the editors missed some spelling and grammatical errors (gah! drives me nuts!) as well. But overall, this was a well-paced, interesting story.

Twelve year old Veronica (Ronnie) Swan is babysitting her two younger sisters and playing hide and go seek. As Ronnie hides in the shed by their house, she starts to think that her sisters are unusually quiet and taking a long time finding her. Pushing open the shed door, she faces a gruesome sight — her sisters lay in a pool of blood on the ground with their necks slashed, while a man, covered in the girls’ blood, stands nearby, spinning madly and talking to himself.

The man, Scott Early, is later diagnosed with untreated schizophrenia. He is found guilty of the murders of Ronnie’s sisters, but declared mentally insane at the time. Instead of being sent to prison, he is sent to a psychiatric hospital for 3 years of treatment and is then released to live freely with his wife and new baby girl. Ronnie and her family, however, must live in their own prisons of guilt and grief as they mourn the loss of the two little girls.

Ronnie grows up quickly in the aftermath of her sisters’ murders. She takes care of her grieving mother and her new baby brother, born just weeks after the murders. She takes care of the house and what’s left of her family while her parents fall apart. Her mother takes to her bed and sleeps as much as possible, while her father leaves them to walk aimlessly night after night in the woods behind their house. After a few years of living in a fog, both of Ronnie’s parents finally come around and make a decision — they decide they will visit Scott Early in the hospital and give him their forgiveness so that they can move forward with their lives.

Ronnie can not understand her parents. To her, forgiving the man that murdered her sisters is like telling him they accept his apology and the deaths. For Ronnie’s parents, forgiving is an act of faith, brought on by months of prayer and the belief that judgment is reserved for God, not them. But Ronnie can not forgive Scott Early. Instead, she decides she will bring some judgment on him herself, and makes a plan to deliver him some of the pain he has caused her family.

Throughout the novel, Ronnie is described as an exceptionally smart young woman. Home-schooled with excellent grades, she graduates from high school early and plans to become a doctor one day. However, for such a smart person, she sure makes some poorly thought-out plans. I suppose that years of grief and thoughts of revenge can cause a person to not think clearly, but then again, she does have years to think things through and plan her revenge. Her plan, once put into action, isn’t very smart, and it certainly isn’t carried out well. I sort of expected more repercussions for her actions, but instead the result has very little consequence to herself. In fact, the ending of the novel turns out to be a little too gratifying. And I suppose after years of pain and sorrow, Ronnie deserves a little happiness in the end, but something just doesn’t feel right about it. Perhaps it has to do with how easily her life goes on, and how well things turn out for her, and how willing everyone around her is to let her off the hook for what she does.

I’d say this is a good book despite the ending. It is well-written, and the pages fly by with an interesting plot to carry it forward. Religion is a major factor in this novel, and I did expect more preaching and religious discussion, but there is surprisingly little apart from some setting up in the beginning and then the overly sweet ending that I found a little hard to believe. Overall, a good read with some interesting themes. (more…)

Ambrose Zephyr has been told by his doctor that he has one month left to live. Ambrose has always loved letters and the alphabet, and so he makes a list, from A to Z, of places to go or things to see or do in the month he has left. He and his wife, Zappora “Zipper” Ashkenazi, then leave everything behind and travel from destination to destination to complete Ambrose’s list.

This was a well-written book, but it’s fairly depressing. Ambrose and Zipper have no one but each other (no kids, no relatives) which makes Ambrose’s imminent death all the more tragic as his wife will be left alone. I think that’s what got to me the most about this book. The sad realization for Zipper that the love of her life for so many years is dying and she will be alone to grieve him. It’s even more tragic that the death isn’t sudden, so they can prepare themselves for it, but it also won’t be far away, so there’s just not enough time left. I was just wiped out by the end, and this was a short novel, so I was surprised by how much of an emotional wallop it packed.

The Callan sisters are not much alike. Clara Callan is the responsible sister who stays on in her family’s little Ontario town and takes care of the house after her parents have both passed on. Nora Callan is the adventurous sister, who craves a more exciting life and moves to New York to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. This would be like many a sister story you’ve read before, except this novel is set in the 1930s, during a time when being a single woman in her 30s was not as glamorous as it is made to be today.

Instead, Clara Callan is categorized as an old maid; a spinster schoolteacher who prefers to stay home alone and read a good book than go out and socialize and find a husband. She thinks she’s too old now, and the chances of her finding a husband to marry and have children with are gone. And she’s right — being an unmarried, 30-something woman in a small town in 1930s Canada doesn’t give her many opportunities to find love at this already “late stage of life”.

Nora has it a little easier. Having moved to the vibrant city of NYC, fresh off the swinging heyday of the 20s, she’s free to date and work and enjoy her life more than her sister is in the the traditional, Puritan village they grew up in. Nora soon makes a name for herself as a radio actress, and with her success comes suitors and admirers. Trouble is, they’re usually married men.  (more…)

I mentioned a while ago in a post about shopping for books and being a cheapskate that I was positive I had a copy of this book somewhere in my house. Turns out I was both right and wrong. I did indeed have a copy of the book — it was just in a big container of books stowed away in the garage. So once I pulled it out from amongst my old Sweet Valley Twins and BSC books, I finally read it again. Then I forgot to review it. Then I started writing the review and saved it as a draft. Then I forgot about the draft. And now I’m up at 4:00 AM, unable to sleep, and I remembered I have this and another book to review.

Anyway… this was a reread for a course I’m marking, and, as I’ve discovered with a lot of rereads lately, I liked it much better than I did when I first read it in grade 9. I guess it just made more sense to me now that I’m older. I can see why this book is a classic — it certainly raised a lot of controversial issues in the day it was published.

The story revolves around the Finch family: a little girl named Scout, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus. The first half of the book centers around Scout’s, Jem’s, and their friend, Dill’s, fascination with Boo Radley — a man living down the street who hasn’t left his house in years. Of course, this causes all sorts of myth to be created about the mysterious locked-in man by the children of the town.

The second half of the story centers around the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl; and in the Southern USA of the 1930s, a black man was guilty until proven innocent. Atticus Finch is appointed as Tom’s attorney, and the family must now deal with the prejudice and anger from a town and the county full of white people raised through through generations of racism and class differences. Through the name calling and threats, Atticus attempts to teach his children to be compassionate to all people: whether they are black or white, poor or rich, smart or slow. He believes that all people should see the world through the eyes of the less fortunate, and not be too quick to judge.

It’s definitely a great story about compassion and honesty and understanding. Atticus epitomizes honesty and goodness, and through the eyes of his children, we see how blinding and wrong racism can be. At times, I thought the book felt a little too long in places (the first half in particular), but the story as a whole contains messages that are worthy of all readers’ time.

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Vida Winter is a famous, bestselling author with a background as mysterious as any novel she’s ever written. Many have tried to get her story, but all have come away with different versions, and none of them the truth. But Vida is dying, and she’s decided the last story she’ll tell is the story of her life before she was famous. She summons an unknown hobby biographer named Margaret Lea to come stay with her as she tells the story of her youth. It’s a story of mystery and violence — shocking and hard to believe. Margaret has to wonder as she listens — is Vida Winter telling the truth, or just telling one last great story?

I loved this book. The language is amazing and beautiful. What I like about Setterfield’s storytelling is that it’s not complicated, but it’s complex. She doesn’t use big words, but her words have big meaning. This story is smart, and I enjoyed every page.
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Two young boys, Frikkie and Tengo, are living in South Africa on the cusp of the revolution set to put an end to apartheid. Frikkie is the privileged white nephew of the farmer who employs Tengo’s black family to work the farm. Frikkie comes to the farm on his school holidays and lives in his uncle Oom Koo’s large home, while Tengo can not go to school and lives in a mud hut not far from the farm.

As young boys, Frikkie and Tengo are inseparable: they play together, they explore the land together, they grow up together. But Tengo is a smart boy and questions everything around him. He questions why Frikkie can go into the big house and eat plenty of food (made by Tengo’s mother) off of expensive china, while Tengo’s family eats porridge off tin plates and is still hungry when the meal is over. He wonders why his family works so hard to keep the farm running, while Frikkie’s family benefit from all their work. But most of all, he wonders why Frikkie can go to school for free and earn a great education, while black people have to pay to go to school and receive inferior educations. (more…)

The story of Lennie and George, two laborers traveling through California on their way to yet another job at yet another ranch where they’ll spend long hours working for little money and not much else to show for it. Lennie is a big, childlike man with a clear mental disability — all he cares about is petting soft things and is dream of taking care of the rabbits on the land he thinks he and George will buy one day if they can make enough money. George is Lennie’s protector, taking care of him and finding them work wherever he can because they can never stay in one place long enough before Lennie does something in his naive way that gets them fired or run out of town.

When Lennie and George find work at a ranch in Salinas Valley, they meet up with a man named Candy. Having lost his hand in an accident on the ranch years ago, Candy is getting old and the work is getting harder. He knows there’s just a matter of time before he’ll be let go from the ranch, and  he has no idea what will become of him. When he overhears George and Lennie talking about their plans to buy their own land, Candy offers up the money he’s been saving for years. With Candy’s money and another couple months’ worth of work, they may just have enough to make the dream a reality and be their own bosses — until Lennie does something that causes everything to turn upside down.

This was a quick read, and a great story about two decent men who can’t seem to outrun tragedies. It can be a bit of a downer read, but the relationship between these men, and the great characters represented within its short pages, makes it one of those great “thinking” stories that I love. As I read it, I could see how it would belong on the stage, because it has those strong, dramatic themes that would make for memorable theatre, the settings are minimal, and the dialogue is something that would be better heard than read. I’m going to have to rent the movie now.