3.5 stars Elise Dembowski has always been painfully uncool at school, and spends an entire summer pretty much studying up on how to become popular, spending much of her savings in the process on a new wardrobe, without any success at all. Things may in fact have gotten even worse for her. In a moment of despair, she cuts herself pretty deeply, and while bleeding, calls a school mate, who naturally freaks out and has paramedics sent to Elise’s house. After this event, Elise’s divorced […]
On marriage, betrayal, independence and forgiveness
A Thousand Pardons is a sharp-edged yet surprisingly funny view of mid-life crisis, complacency in marriage, teen-age angst, and the dramatic turns these can taken when least expected. A privileged family in suburban upstate New York suddenly discovers serious fault lines in their lives when Helen realizes that the man she married so many years ago no longer exists. Oh, Ben drives to his law practice every day, sleeps in her bed, and eats her food, but interaction with her or their adopted teenaged daughter […]
The Golden Notebook: A Novel by Doris Lessing
There is a part of me that feels brazen and shameless for daring to write reviews of literary classics. Who am I to judge Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example (which I did for Cannonball Read 5)? The Golden Notebook is another such a book, but it is also one of those novels that I have wanted to read because it appears on so many “must read” lists, particularly among feminists. So I will boldly proceed with this review in the hope that I do […]