Well, do you? Do you crack yourself up?
I do. I find myself highly entertaining. I go back and read what I’ve written on some posts, and I get myself giggling so much that I can’t even tell Dave what I’m laughing about.
And don’t even get me started if I record myself doing anything. I will watch that over and over and laugh and laugh.
I crack myself up.
Do you?
I put this book on my wishlist when I read Lit Chick’s review. Alas, BookMooch doesn’t get all the books I want, so when I finally resorted to using my local library (*gasp* I know! Shocking!), The Senator’s Wife was one of the first books I put on hold.
This is the first book I’ve read by Sue Miller, and I couldn’t read fast enough. This book was SO GOOD.
The Senator’s Wife is about two women and the marriages they’re in: Meri, newly married to Nate, with whom she had a very short courtship, and who is extremely immature; and Delia, separated from but still married to the famous senator, Tom Naughton, who has had affair after affair after affair.
Meri and Nate move in next to Delia, thinking that Tom lives there as well, but are disappointed to find out that while Delia and Tom are still married, they no longer live together and Tom rarely visits. A friendship develops between Meri and Delia, though Meri is often trying to pry personal information out of Delia that she doesn’t care to share.
There’s much I can’t say about this book as it would give away key plot points, so let me instead talk about what I thought.
The book alternates viewpoints between Meri and Delia, all told in third person, which is extremely gratifying to those of us who wish to be omniscient. During the story, you learn some of Delia’s history, getting to know Delia as a person based on that history. Meri, on the other hand, we learn about in the present: from the way she deals with her husband, to poking around in Delia’s house while housesitting, to having a hard time bonding with her newborn.
One of the persistent questions of the book is, Why stay with someone who can’t stay faithful? I think the author did an excellent job of probing this topic. I can’t help but remember a friend of mine telling me that if her husband had cheated on her before they’d had children, she would have left him in a heart beat. But after they had children, well, it just wasn’t a simple situation anymore. Delia by no means condones her husband’s actions, but she is able to come to a resolution that is satisfactory for herself, though baffling to her children and outsiders.
Both Meri and Delia are fascinating characters, not only as individuals, but the way they behave in their respective marriages.
While I would classify this novel as a character study, it never felt slow, due in large part to the interesting characters. The reader learns and should hopefully understand on some level why Delia would stay with a filanderer, even if that’s not what they would do themselves. This, to me, is what great writing (and reading!) is about: going outside of yourself into a situation you might not understand based on your own circumstances, but once the story is told, being able to understand from the character’s viewpoint.
This would make a great book club selection, and I’ll definitely be recommending it to my own book club.
Rating: 93 out of 100
Other (probably better) reviews:
A friend forwarded this to me, and I couldn’t help but share it with you. If the pictures are burned into my brain, then it’s only fair that they should be burned into your brain as well.
Did you know you can cook with semen?
::blink::
::blink::
Yup. True story.
This cookbook, pictured above, is called Natural Harvest: A collection of semen-based recipes.
I wonder if the book calls cooks who cook with semen as come cooks. Because really, isn’t that what they are?
Excuse me for my ignorance, but the picture on the cover of the book looks like flan. Whether it is or it isn’t, there is something so wrong about picturing a jiggly, custardy dessert in a cookbook featuring semen. They couldn’t show a frothy milkshake or a healthy salad? I mean, I don’t think I’ll get into cooking with semen, but anything other than flan would have made the book just that much more appealing.
All the jokes I should be making about using semen in cooking just aren’t coming to me.
Ba-dum-dum.
The original article that was forwarded to me can be found here.
I met Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, at Book Group Expo back in October. I was impressed because she held her own being the only other author on a panel with Andre Dubus III, who many people thought was a pompous windbag, but I thought was just fascinating. I would have bought her debut novel Who By Fire at the Expo, but it was all sold out when I finally broke down and looked at the books being sold by Books, Inc. Being sold out at the Expo, I thought, was probably good and bad. Good: everyone wanted your book! Bad: no more books to sell! Diana agreed to have her publisher send me a copy after I gushed about how much I enjoyed her panel with Andre Dubus III.
I think the relationship between authors and readers is symbiotic. I haven’t decided if that’s a good or a bad thing, since books are my “drug of choice” and authors keep pushing their stash on me. Good or bad, I’m not complaining.
Who By Fire is about a family that fell apart when the youngest in the family, Alena, was kidnapped. Alena was never found, and her kidnapping has left everyone broken, in one way or another. Ash, the middle child, blames himself for Alena’s kidnapping, and is trying to find peace in Orthodox Judaism, going so far as to move to Israel to live in a yeshiva. Bits (short for Beatrice), the oldest, has yet to find peace, but makes due with promiscuity. Their dad is long gone, re-married and raising a new family. Ellie, their mom, intent on getting her family back together, is dating a man who’s had luck at deprogramming people in cults and has promised he can get Ash back, but he needs her money to do so.
The story is told from alternating points of view; Bits, Ash, and Ellie all tell a portion of the story, of their story, and while it took a little getting used to, you quickly get immersed in the story and seamlessly read from one narrator to the other.
The characters were great. They’re all extremely flawed, and watching Bits in particular is akin to watching a car wreck. She makes one bad decision after another, and while her intentions are ultimately noble (she needs to convince her brother to come back for Alena’s funeral as they’ve recently found her remains), she certainly makes a lot of mistakes before she starts learning and changing.
One thing I thought the author hit on beautifully is that the things people remember about their childhood are often skewed. Here’s an example:
Ash and I sat at the kitchen table, our heads roating from parent to parent. Our father said, “I can’t take this.” He said, “Kids, your mother and I don’t love each other anymore.” In my memory, he’s cheerful when he says it, as if he’s telling us to get packed for Disneyland….”
And here’s how Ash remembers the same morning:
(Ash is asking himself, “Who, besides God, deserves my loyalty?”) My father, the opposite of Moses, who shed his family like a scratchy sweater, who, the morning he decided to leave us, the morning my mother threw a spatula at him, turned to Bits and me and said, “Kids, I don’t love you anymore”? (Bits always tells me I’m wrong; she swears he said that he and our mother didn’t love each other anymore, but I don’t know…I remember what I remember.)
I really enjoyed this book. I understood where each character was coming from and I enjoyed watching the characters develop and evolve.
This would make a great book club pick. Themes and discussion topics abound that I think would encourage people to talk about their own families and their own childhoods, such as forgiveness, parental abandonment, the relationship that siblings have, and how people handle a crisis differently, just to name a few. It’s books like this that really bring a book club to life.
I don’t doubt that Diana Spechler will be hugely successful. This debut novel has garnered critical praise, and she has a drive common amongst the successful. I look forward to reading more from her.
Rating: 90 out of 100
You can check out the author’s website here.
You can buy the book from Amazon here.
You can support an independent bookstore by buying the book here.
Other (probably better) reviews:
Guest posts the author has done:
At the beginning of the year I did a round up of various posts I’d done throughout the year. I offered that if you left a link to your favorite post, I’d go ahead and post them here (okay, and some people left more than one link, but that was fine). So. In no particular order, here is the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the creme de la creme, if you will:
Mommy Wants Vodka – Kiss My Ass, Valtrex. Oh, Wait, Please Don’t.
Subliminal Intervention – Expiration dates: Not always there just for appearances
Subliminal Intervention -How to Dismantle the Ultimate Experience
A Striped Armchair – Book sluts, reading moods, and giveaways oh my!
A Striped Armchair -The Pagemaster and Wishbone
Jen’s Book Thoughts – Author Interviews
Literary Menagerie – Away By Amy Bloom
Breaking the Spine – Sunday Salon: Book Blogging
Necromancy Never Pays – Book of the Year?
books i done read – Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
books i done read – New Moon – Stephanie Meyer
books i done read – Eclipse – Stephanie Meyer
write meg! – London on the Brain
Savvy Verse and Wit – Writing and Writing Spaces, Part 1
Savvy Verse and Wit – Marketing the Poet
Savvy Verse and Wit – Pemberley by the Sea by Abigail Reynolds
This whole idea was inspired by this Creme de la Creme, which I will do more like hers next year. I know. I’m a big copy cat. But I loved the idea and she said I could use it. Thank you to Melissa from Stirrup Queens.
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