August Book Club: The Life We Bury

This book genuinely caught me by surprise. I was expecting a melodrama, bittersweet and tough to read. Shows you really should never judge a book by its cover, regardless of the cliche. Actually, I think I judged it purely on the book title and cover before even reading the premise. Once I read the premise about a college kid discovering the story behind a man convicted of pedophilia and murder, it truly aroused my interest because I’ve never before read a book like that.

Pedophilia is a tough subject to tackle. It’s a universally loathed crime, considered the bottom of the barrel as far as criminal activity, even by criminals themselves. It’s a subject where we chose to conveniently cover our eyes and ears to the background of the criminal because the crime is so horrific that we can’t see past it – not even to a background for the criminal who might have been abused themselves at one point. Society wants to bury these criminals and not look too hard, because the thought of people who commit these horrible crimes as people rather than monsters is unbearable. The thought that anyone could be a pedophile is unthinkable and truly terrifying. And the way society treats these convicted criminals is a testament to it – even murderers are further up the food chain even in prison.

So I genuinely thought that’s what the author was tackling. SPOILERS AHEAD! Unfortunately, he took the easy route and instead made the criminal wrongfully convicted. He does, however, create some nicely fleshed out characters (except for the main villain, who is very 2-dimensional unfortunately), all with moral gray areas to their characters, which make them very interesting. Even the main character’s mother, who seems a genuinely horrible human being, is fleshed out. She has a severe mental disorder: bipolar disorder, which was kept under control while her father, the stable force in her life was alive. When he died, her life literally spun out of control. The main character’s entire actions, including some very very stupid ones – like going to interview a suspect instead of letting the police handle it – were motivated by the guilt he felt over his grandfather’s death and his inability to save him. This guilt, no doubt, is the reason he lets his mother walk all over him, when in other ways he seems more in charge of his life. He possibly feels like the destruction of his family life was his fault because he allowed his grandfather to die without being able to save him.

Carl’s guilt is on par with the main character’s guilt. He, too, did not do anything that would subjectively be called wrong, but his guilt and PTSD was severe enough to destroy him until he felt he was able to recompense for it by taking responsibility even though he hadn’t committed the crime. I was, however, surprised that he didn’t have more defenders given that he was a well decorated veteran. I would have expected more sympathy and more people willing to believe in his innocence. However, the fact that he pushed for a speedy trial in itself didn’t help his case.

Mental disorders are seriously discussed in this book, with multiple characters experiencing some type of disorder. Carl = PTSD, younger brother = autism, mom = bipolar disorder, main character = PTSD, actual criminal’s father = depression, flatmate = PTSD, girlfriend of victim =depression and possibly PTSD.

The ending was a bit too neatly tied up – come on, $100,000 reward for information on capturing a criminal? Why would the police have given the entire reward to the kid, given that the main character didn’t even know the connection to the second dead girl? It was just a convenient way to create a happily ever after for the main character without much realism. Also, I get that the girl was very involved in the case towards the end of the book, but to me they didn’t seem close enough for her to get over her fears of intimacy and PTSD and sleep with him. Plus, I genuinely don’t see the relationship continuing without the lynch pin of the autistic brother. Her ease at being around the autistic brother probably stems from the fact that she sees no threat in him, as he does not seem capable of manipulating and taking advantage of her.

All in all, a very interesting book with some good character developments and a few disappointments. Recommended for a good read.

July Book Club: Some Girls Bite

This is not a book I would have ever chosen on my own. Let’s face it, I’m not a vampire loving kind of girl. Before the Twilight craze I would have been neutral towards the subject, but post-Twilight, it’s now cool to be all snobbish against it (all joking aside, I did watch the first movie and was kind of bored by the story, and the accounts of obvious emotional abuse in the book horrified me enough and my distaste for boring female characters was enough to turn me off from attempting to read it). So I approached this book with obvious ambivalence. And this is the best thing about a book club – books you never would have chosen to read that you end up actually liking.

It was a fun summer read and I was able to finish it in a few days, much faster than I usually read books these days (which tells you how much it sucked me in). I also really like that the main character is a kick ass female. Let’s face it, this genre reeks of the desperate female clinging on to the strong male to protect her from “ze evil ones”. Not so with this book. The author actually realized that women like reading about strong females and made her main character both mentally and physically very strong (I’m really not sure I would have remained sane, let alone taken on a leadership role, if I had been forcibly turned into a vampire). Her story resonated because she was a woman roughly my age, adjusting to life as an adult (who isn’t these days…sigh), when her life gets turned upside down by an unfortunate event.

I was not a fan of the main male character. However, he could have been written a lot worse (hint: more like Edward from Twilight), so I was at least grateful that the main female character put up some resistance to his charms.

Other than some of the writing being a bit odd (use of the word genuflecting used in everyday dialog took me aback given the casual tone of the rest of the book – mystery solved when I found out the author was an English major). I see a bit of a the first time writer influence (character has some resemblance to the author and embraces a few ideals which many women, author included I’m sure, aspire to), it was nonetheless a very compelling read. If you don’t mind some light fiction and vampires don’t completely turn you off, I’d recommend at least giving it a try.

June Book Club: Wool by Hugh Howey

I had heard of Wool before but never knew it was a sci-fi book until I picked it up for this book club. One word of advice for anyone who’s going to read this book: definitely read book 2: shift, and book 3: dust, as well if you want to understand the world more completely and have all the questions answered.

I must say, when I first completed this book, I was highly disappointed by the lack of answers. At the time I wasn’t aware that it was part of a trilogy and my disappointment was only alleviated after I found out there was more to the story, which thoroughly delighted me.

For a first book it was decently written. Good world building that sucked me in and had me questioning why the dystopian world was the way it was (which was the same mindset as some of the characters living in it). The little teasers as to the backstory of this world had me very interested and very frustrated when they weren’t answered in this book. Book 2: Shift, is a prequel and answers a lot of the questions raised in book one and really questions the morality of “means justifying ends”. I wasn’t even sure if the bad guy really was the bad guy even though he did very many questionable things, purely for the fact that his end goal had some understandable reasoning behind it. However, I did also see how he was rationalizing his need to stay in power (I’m drawing parallels to a manga I’m currently reading called Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, where the seemingly bad guy has some good intentions at heart).

Book 3 completed the trilogy and tied up all the loose ends very neatly – in a good way. I wasn’t left disappointed and I felt like the author took the story as far as he could without destroying its integrity. Book 3 is very bittersweet though: be prepared to shed a few buckets if you’re the emotional sort.

Overall, I’d rate the series as a very good series, book 2 as the best of the series, and book 1 as possibly the weakest – but that’s only because it’s his first attempt at writing. Some of the parts of book 1 had some pacing issues – like the diving scene in the last third of the book had me wanting to skip whole pages with the whole scenario of breathing bubbles breaking immersion. But the rest of the story was tightly written and intriguing enough to keep me going. The first book also did not have as much character development but I feel like the author more than made up for it in book 2 and 3, and we some deep characterizations of major characters in both books.

Highly recommend the series to anyone interested in science fiction.

 

 

April Book Club: The Husband’s Secret

The next few posts are unfortunately going to be shorter ones since I don’t have as much time as I would like to post blog entries. But I’m still glad to share my opinion on the books though 🙂

This was quite a thrilling page-turner and I was quite surprised at how I got sucked into the book immediately. The premise was incredibly interesting as well. The idea that the man you have been married to has been harboring a dark secret, and having discovered a letter to be read after his death, who could resist the temptation to read it? SPOILERS AHEAD!

There are 3 women who’s stories are told, each of which are connected by one particular incident that happened several years ago – the murder of a local girl. One is the mother of the girl, one is a woman who is dealing with marital problems and meets up with one of the suspects, and the third is a woman who is indirectly related to the girl by a letter she discovers from her husband.

The last woman’s moral dilemma, the first one of many to come, was very realistic. I immediately put myself in her place, trying to think of what in the world I would have done. On the one hand, like her, I want to trust my husband and give him the benefit of the doubt, because my world would come crashing around me if I actually believed he would betray my trust. On the other hand, my curiosity would have eaten away until I could no longer bear it. Like her, I, too, thought it was very likely that the husband had an affair and was confessing it in this letter. I actually support her decision to have read it because, regardless of the secret, a good marriage should not hide secrets between the spouses. Of course, given what this secret turned out to be, perhaps some things are better left unsaid.

Her second moral dilemma stemmed from the fact that now she knew the secret, should she tell someone, given that it will most definitely destroy her life, and more importantly, her kids’ lives forever. She has to weigh this against the idea of justice for the poor girl that died and the poor mother of the girl who continues to suffer. She makes a fateful decision at that point to keep her counsel, choosing her family over justice.

Her third moral dilemma arises from the fact that not telling anyone about the secret resulted in a sequence of events where her own beloved child ended up in a tragic situation and her guilt and grief forces her to confessing to the mother of the murdered girl.

The second woman’s story that is told is particular sad. Her husband is having an affair with her best friend and they decide to break it to her – well, kind of an affair. They haven’t actually slept together but they are in love with each other without acting on it, which I found bizarre. Her world, too, comes crashing down, and they, too, have a child who will be affected by this revelation. I truly felt anger towards both husband and best friend, who were clearly pretty selfish. Based on how they ended the relationship, it’s clear they could have chosen to go their separate ways if they wanted to, and they didn’t actually weigh the fallout of their decision. I guess, this is the opposite of what Carol was going through, where the husband has a secret and doesn’t tell the wife; in this case they do choose to tell the wife. When I heard the best friend’s story I felt a little sympathy for her, but I still felt like I would never be able to forgive her or trust my husband again, even though the wife sadly chose to go back to the husband when he came crying back to her because he couldn’t bear to be parted from his son. And I felt especially sad for the guy she hooked up with, who clearly was in love with her, and had already been dealt a harsh blow in life.

The mother of the murdered girl was by far the saddest story, and the pain, grief and guilt that led her to try and murder the man she suspected killed her daughter was incredibly understandable given her situation. And the fact that she ended up accidentally hurting an innocent child instead made it that much worse. In effect, the two families cancelled each other’s sins – and it’s horrifying to think of what might have been if she had actually managed to hit the guy she suspected of killing her daughter since his life was already a huge tragic tale suffering from the effects of his girlfriend’s death and the woman whom he loved leaving him to go back to a cheating husband.

In the end this book was chock full of suspense and emotion. A tale well told and was hard to put down.

 

 

 

The Girl on the Train on October 1, 2015

Image courtesy of GoodReads

This is the very first post on our brand new website. We decided to switch over from Meetups, since that required a monthly fee to keep open.

For more info about us, check out the About Us page.

Our book for October is titled The Girl on the Train.