Review: Leaving Before It's Over by Jean Reynolds Page

  Leaving Before It's Over by Jean Reynolds Page tells the story of Roy Vines and his family - both old and new.  Roy Vines, a mechanic in a small North Carolina town, decided to leave his parents, twin brother and all claims to inheritance behind when he married his wife, Rosalind, and built a life with her and their two girls.  For fifteen years, he had no contact with his family and had reconciled himself to the fact that he found in his new family what he never got from his birth family - love, acceptance and support.  When his wife becomes ill with a blood disorder, however, and Roy needs money for her treatment, he decides to swallow his pride and return to his parents home to ask for financial assistance.  On that trip back to Virginia, his birth and new families collide and Roy faces the many definitions of family.

As Roy goes to his parents home in Virginia to ask for money, he is forced to face his feelings about his parents and brother.

"... Taylor was right, he knew, but with no present to draw on, past hurts made up the bulk of Roy's feelings about his extended family.  He couldn't make something out of nothing."

To further complicate a difficult family "reunion", there is the issue of 17 year old Luke.  Luke is presented as Roy's son whom he left behind in Virginia when he left to marry Rosalind.  Luke has been raised by Roy's parents and brother.  In Luke, Roy can see many of the hurts of his own childhood suffered at the hands of his family.  Although they provided shelter and structure for the boy, Roy can see that the boy has never received any support or encouragement.  He senses he has never felt truly wanted but cared for out of obligation. 

Although there is the family drama of secrets from years past and hurts by parents, the story is surprisingly comforting.  As we return with Roy to North Carolina, we observe the love he has for Rosalind and she for him and their shared love for their two girls, Lola and Janie Ray.  Lola, age sixteen, is beginning to explore dating and four year old Janie Ray is the loveable little sister always asking for someone to take her fishing.  There is an innocence about the lives of the Vine family in North Carolina and a purity about their love for the family they have built which is refreshing.  The cynical part of me kept waiting, chapter after chapter, for a tragedy to befall these characters.

Against the backdrop of the stern and manipulative Vines of Virginia, the family Roy has built in North Carolina is all the more triumphant - there is a hope in his ability to start fresh and provide for his children what he did not have as a child and build a partnership with his wife that he surely did not see modeled while growing up.  When he is forced to face those past hurts, his present life becomes all the more valuable.  I warmed to Roy's character and was consistently impressed by his "stand up" values and his ability to see good in people and do good for them.  All in all, this is an uplifting story with the meaning of family - especially the family you find and build - at its core.

Jean Reynolds Page is a new author for me but she has written three previous novels which also focus on the theme of family relationships  - conventional and unconventional. 

To read other perspectives on this book, stop in on some of the other bloggers hosting the tour of Leaving Before It's Over: A Novel.  Here are the hosts and dates:


Wednesday, August 25th: Scraps of Life
Tuesday, August 31st: Rundpinne
Thursday, September 2nd: Colloquium
Friday, September 3rd: Reading at the Beach
Tuesday, September 7th: Lisa’s Yarns
Thursday, September 9th: Shhh I’m Reading
Monday, September 13th: Café of Dreams
Tuesday, September 14th: Bookstack
Wednesday, September 15th: Book Club Classics!
Wednesday, September 22nd: Jenn’s Bookshelves

Thank you to Trish of TLC for the review copy of this book. This books meets the criteria of the "who are you?" category of the Twenty Ten Challenge.

Review Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

Wow. I loved this book - it is engaging, educational and, above all, inspiring! Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health which is an organization that fights disease and poverty among the globe's poorest and sickest in countries such as Haiti, Rwanda and Peru. His personal quest to treat patients one by one, improve their lives and fight for global health equality is impressive.

A Preferential Option for the Poor
Paul Farmer's commitment to public service started while at Duke where he worked became interested in migrant labor camps near the University. He was struck by how wretched the conditions were for these mostly Haitian workers and wanted to learn more about the country they left behind to toil on these farmers as migrant workers. He went to Haiti to volunteer his time while he awaited responses from the medical schools to which he had applied. His life was never the same - from that point on, he traveled to and fro Haiti (even while completing medical school) providing care to the country's sick who were desperate for even the most basic treatment. He quickly realizes, however, that he will never staunch the spread of disease just by treating the patients as they present - the key is in prevention and the institution of some basic public health measures such as clean water and sanitation.

Farmer founded Partners in Health initially to fund a clinic he and others had opened and through which they provided free medical care in Cange, Haiti. He soon became interested in the treatment of TB since it plagued so many of the clinic's patients and he discovered that in addition to primary TB, many patients presented with MDR TB (multi-drug resistant). MDR threatened to cause a catastrophic health crisis and Farmer became impassioned about bucking the traditional public health and infectious disease paradigms for treating TB in impoverished communities. This work expanded PIH's efforts into Peru and Russia where MDR was flourishing and putting the poor population at risk.

"Pathology, social medicine, politics, anthropology. My Model."
Farmer is first and foremost a physician - although he becomes increasingly involved in public health policy and fundraising as his organization expands, he is happiest when he is treating patients in The Brigham in Boston or in any of the clinics throughout the world where he provides essential care to the world's poorest. He meets patients "where they are at" and tries to meet their basic needs as part of their medical treatment - this integration of social medicine and clinical medicine is Farmer's signature and what has made his work for the poorest patients so successful. There are many stories throughout the book of Farmer treating patients both in the first world of Mass General and in the third world of the people's roofless homes in the mountains of Haiti. Within each story, a few things are evident - Farmer has a passion for medicine and the deductive process of diagnosis and he cares deeply for each and every patient. In fact, this became a criticism levied against him and PIH - those in public health circles felt Farmer and PIH focused more on the patient in front of them than on developing sustainable health solutions. While I see the argument that sustainability is important in any public health endeavor and that you can do more harm by swooping in to help and then needing to abruptly leave because your methods were not sustainable, Farmer's brand of personalized medicine is appealing if only because it deals directly with the problem at hand.

My Thoughts
This book appealed to me on so many levels - I work in a scientific field so the parts of the book that dealt with patients and the treatment of disease were very interesting for me. In addition, I have a Masters in Public Health and took courses on healthcare inequities, issues in global health and the principles of public health policy and I feel as if this book could have been taught in any of those courses! Finally, I have always harbored a desire to work for an NGO focusing on healthcare in a underdeveloped country and this book has fueled that desire. My company offers a unique opportunity that would allow me to do this and I am now committed to pursuing it. This book truly affected me and I am happy to see their are unselfish, dedicated and inspiring people such as Dr. Paul Farmer in the world.



I was inspired to read this book by a post from Mel at lit chick following the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year - PIH has been doing work in Haiti for more than 20 years and was one of the charitable organizations able to do the most on the ground immediately following the quake. You can make a donation to PIH here to fund their work in Haiti or in a number of other needy communities.
I read this book for the Social Justice Challenge (AIDS crisis month); it also meets the criteria for the Bad Blogger category of the TwentyTen Challenge and the Non Fiction Five Challenge

Review: Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney

Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel by Frank Delaney

Summary (from Frank Delaney.com): January 1932: While Ireland roils in the run-up to the most important national election in the Republics short history, Ben MacCarthy and his father watch a vagabond variety revue making a stop in the Irish countryside. After a two-hour kaleidoscope of low comedy, Shakespearean recitations, juggling, tumbling, and other entertainments, Bens father, mesmerized by Venetia Kelly, the troupe's magnetic headliner, makes a fateful decision: to abandon his family and set off on the road with Miss Kelly and her caravan. Ben's mother, shattered by the desertion, exhorts, Find him and bring him back, thereby sending the boy on a Homeric voyage into manhood, a quest that traverses the churning currents of Ireland's fractious society and splinters the MacCarthy family.

Interweaving historical figures including W.B. Yeats and a host of unforgettable creationsKing Kelly, Venetia's violent, Mephistophelean grandfather; Sarah Kelly, Venetia's mysterious, amoral mother; and even a truth-telling ventriloquist's dummy named Blarney. Frank Delaney unfurls a splendid narrative that spans half the world and a tumultuous, eventful decade.

My Review

The book opens with the announcement of the birth of the title character Venetia Kelly, as told by the narrator, Ben McCarthy. It is clear from the first paragraph, if not from the novel's title, that Venetia Kelly will play a pivotal role in this story. It is almost as if she is ordained with mythical power even from birth. But rather than immediately dive into Venetia's story, Delaney carefully weaves a tapestry of characters which surround or are connected to Venetia in some way. At first, it was difficult to see how all the threads were going to come together - the story moved from NYC to Ireland and between members of the Kelly and McCarthy families in the first 100 pages. But those 100 pages served their purpose - I found myself completely drawn into the story at that point. I knew the characters well and was driven to read on and see how the story would unfold and how they would influence each other's stories.

The use of Ben McCarthy as the narrator is an interesting device. Ben is telling this story as a man in his 50's reflecting on events that took place when he was an 18 year old on the verge of manhood. He acknowledges that here:

As you read, please know that I am a man of mature years telling the story of himself when young, so forgive me if at times I make the young me seem and sound older than eighteen.

By having the narrator speak so directly to the reader, Delaney makes the reader feel almost as if they are listening to a story being told by a friend as he reminisces about his childhood. The many "digressions" taken by narrator enhances the sense of the story being told to you - Ben speaks to the reader in the way you would imagine any good Irish storyteller would - by taking a circuitous route with lots of color thrown in for good measure. Interestingly enough, there is a link on Frank Delaney's website to lectures he has given on the tradition of Irish oral storytelling. That tradition is perpetuated in his narrator Ben McCarthy.

I truly enjoyed this expansive novel - it is rich and multi-layered and one of the few books I would choose to reread. There is so much woven into the novel - Irish political history, mythology and complex characters- that I feel it is a book that can be read on many levels and you may see different things upon reread. It has been a long time since I have been so absorbed in a novel; this is my first Delaney but most certainly will not be my last - I will definitely be going back to read his earlier novels!

I received this book from the author's publicist for review. This book meets the criteria for the Ireland Reading Challenge and the New in 2010 category of the Twenty 10 challenge

Review: Eternal on Water by Joseph Monninger

Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger

Publisher Summary (from Simon and Schuster):

From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine's Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river's treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily...and neither does their love. So when Mary's life takes the cruelest turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey.

Set against the rugged wilderness of Maine, the exotic islands of Indonesia, the sweeping panoramas of Yellowstone National Park, and the tranquil villages of rural New England, Eternal on the Water is at once heartbreaking and uplifting -- a timeless, beautifully rendered story of true love's power.

My Review

This book is beautifully written - the prose is simple but artful in its simplicity. There is a lyricism in the writing that is difficult to articulate in a review - as a reader, I felt that I was gently carried through the novel. Below is an example of the simplicity of the writing:

"The boy's breathing had been unsteady for the past two hours. Air had become more difficult for the boy to find."

By saying air was "difficult to find", the author allowed me to visualize the boy struggling to breathe without saying it so plainly. There are many other such examples throughout the novel.

The storyline is poignant but relatively simple and there are no sudden turns in the plot - in fact, the book opens with Mary's death so you really already know how it ends before you begin. Yet, despite that, I was completely drawn in and enjoyed every moment of Mary and Cobb's story. I was honestly surprised by how much their story captivated me - there is no background provided about either Mary or Cobb before they meet so you are not invested in them as individuals at all before they meet and fall in love. They fall in love immediately and are discussing futures including the possibility of children within two days of their initial meeting. I am not a romantic by any definition of the word - I can be logical to a fault at times and I struggle to understand love at first sight. I cannot imagine falling so quickly and completely for another person and yet I loved Mary and Cobb's story - I credit the author's skill in subtly telling their story with my ability to set aside logic and just fall along with Mary and Cobb.

Mary and Cobb's relationship faces a challenge - Mary knows she will likely develop Huntington's disease which is progressively debilitating and ultimately fatal. Having watched her father die a horrible death at the hand of this disease, Mary has strong feelings about living life fully and exerting some control over her own death. The specter of her death and the hand she expects Cobb to play at the end of her life challenges the reader to consider important questions - would I choose to live my life differently knowing for certain that I would not live a long life? How does one summon the strength to make difficult end of life decisions?

This book has it all - a beautifully told love story, scenery spanning from Maine to Indonesia and it challenges you to consider life's big questions. I absolutely loved this novel and the emotional ride I took with Mary and Cobb.

Thank you to the publisher for providing this review copy.

This book qualifies for the "body of water" category of the What's In a Name Challenge and the "New in 2010" category of the TwentyTen Challenge

Review: The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble

The Reading Group: A Novel (P.S.) by Elizabeth Noble tells the story of a book club which consists of a collection of middle-aged women facing a variety of challenges in their lives and how the friendships they develop support them through these crises. Although it deals with heavier topics, such as infidelity, abortion and the death of one's parents, it is a decidedly light-hearted novel which celebrates female friendship.

The book is told from the perspectives of each of the book club members (and sometimes others in each of their lives) - at first, it was difficult to follow each story but I quickly became familiar with the characters and looked forward to the next chapter which would focus on their story. I do think, however, the story could have done without the perspectives of those outside the book club (such as the significant others of each of the reading group members). The story would have been tighter without the distractions of these other character perspectives - since these characters were not well developed, their points of view didn't seem as relevant to the reader. Other than this criticism, I have positive things to say about the book - I really enjoyed it and it felt like a familiar, comfortable read to me. Was it predictable at times? Yes - but that was Ok as I was quite caught up in the characters and their friendships and that was more important to me than a riveting plot with unexpected turns. I have read other Elizabeth Noble novels (Alphabet Weekend) and will certainly read more.

The reading group in this novel is really just a device to bring together these women, have them tell their stories and develop relationships with each other. The book opens with a quote by Margaret Atwood which I think is pretty apt for the book clubs I have been fortunate to be part of: "The real, hidden subject of a book group discussion is the book members themselves". Like the women in the novel's reading group, the lives of my fellow book club members have unfolded during many a book club meeting and we have looked to the group, at times, to provide emotional sustenance in difficult times. The women in this novel do the same and, as the novel progresses, they look forward more and more to their monthly meetings. My book clubs have mostly talked about the books (I have left book clubs in which the book never came up at a meeting) but the discussion would weave through the book but also the lives of each member or our opinions on issues in the book. The books in the novel are given are very light touch by the reading group - there is no real literary criticism going on at these meetings - but I like how the books are always a backdrop to scenes in the novel and to each of their lives.

There is some interesting content at the back of the book - in addition to a brief bio and interview with the author, there is a list of tips for setting up a book club and a piece written by a member of the author's book club which describes each member and how they approach their book club meetings. For a book club lover like me, this content was a great added bonus!

So, tell me about your book clubs - do you strictly talk about the books at your meetings? Do you clubs consist of friends, acquaintances or both? How do you choose your books?

This book qualifies for the Typically British Reading Challenge and the "TBR" category of the Twenty Ten Challenge

Review: Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks is the story of the author's journey through the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and her examination of Middle Eastern women and the cultural, religious and political influences which shape their lives. In each Middle Eastern country, she befriends and interviews women who tell their stories and describe their experiences living under the laws of their countries and within the requirements of their religion (often one and the same).

Brooks tells the story of a variety of women - poor and uneducated, highly educated, western converts to Islam, royalty, political figures and from a variety of Middle Eastern countries. I found the story of Asya, a recent graduate of Gaza University particularly compelling. Asya, a 29 year old unmarried woman who worked as journalist's assistant and breadwinner for her family, also adhered strictly to the laws of her religion and maintained a life segregated from men and shrouded in hijab. She struggled to find a husband (ok - I can relate to that!) who she could dialogue with and who, while respecting the requirements of their Islamic religion, would also respect her intellect and education. As much as I support and believe in the power of education to overcome injustices and ignorance, it seems almost unfair to educate women in countries where they are often restricted from using that education and many times not respected for their intellect. The author provides an update on Asya (and some of the other women) in the afterword to the book which appears on her website.

I thought this book was very well done and it certainly educated me on the variety of practices within Muslim countries and their impact on its women. Brooks expertly weaved excerpts from te Koran throughout the book and tried to dispute how some fundamentalists had misused the holy text to justify severe restrictions on women. She explores the teaching of Mohammed in an effort to distinguish between his teachings, generally allowing much more equality for women, and those of the more conservative political powers within many Middle Eastern countries. I appreciated the references to the Koran as is helped to substantiate the author's position that many of the oppressive practices enforced in these countries are, in fact, not mandated by the Koran. In addition, it emphasizes that the religion of Islam itself is not to blame for the violation of women's rights and other extremist views but rather the politicization of Islamic religion which has fueled fundamentalist extremism.

This book was written in 1995, and while reading it, I wondered how relevant its explanations of cultural and political influences still were 15 years later. I came the conclusion that in many cases things have likely gotten worse for women in these countries with the move towards a more conservative states which required strict adherence to Islamic law. Brooks seems to have done an excellent job of predicting to spread of fundamentalism throughout the Middle East. The afterword that appears on her website is written in following the terrorist attacks on 2001 - after reading this book, I found her perspective on this event interesting.

If you are looking for an introduction to the Muslim religion as it is practiced throughout the Middle East and its impact on women and their rights within those countries, I would recommend this book. It reads like a memoir, not a textbook, and artfully weaves stories of women with explanations of the Koran and the political forces at play within the Middle East. Excellent!

This book was my selection for January's theme of religious freedom for the Social Justice Challenge ; it also applies for the World Religion Challenge and for the "win win" category of the TwentyTen Challenge