Durable Goods – Elizabeth Berg

Katie Nash is twelve, the plain younger sister of Diane and army brat daughter of a disciplinarian military father. When their mother died, all the softness went out of Katie’s life, but at least her dad saves most of his anger for her sister. Younger than her classmates, Katie’s best friend and neighbour Cherylanne is almost fifteen – they can’t hang out at school, but once they’re home Cherylanne gives Katie guidance in the ways of the world. All in all, Katie’s reasonably happy with her life. Which is when they get moved to another base. Diane, in love with local boy Dickie, decides to run away to Mexico, and Katie goes with them.
Though some of her usual elements are present Durable Goods is something of a departure for Berg – the novel is shorter and less complex than most of her other work, and though it’s shelved in the adult section, it reads as a young adult book.
Though there are a number of serious elements (Berg touches on mourning, physical abuse and losses of innocence) these are not her main focus - the overall tone is light. Katie is an endearing and honest character, and her relationships with Cherylanne, Diane and her father are developed and realistic. Though the precise year isn’t mentioned, the setting is late fifties or early sixties, and Berg captures the era beautifully. As you’d expect with such a young protagonist, there’s no mention of anything wider than her immediate life, but the time is portrayed through incidental aspects (like Elizabeth Taylor being a role model in the magazines). Berg not only gives a convincing sense of place but of what it’s like to be a young girl poised between the innocence of childhood and the cusp of adulthood. - Alex

The Pull of the Moon – Elizabeth Berg

Nan is fifty, the mother of a grown daughter who has a life of her own, and the wife of Martin. After a lifetime of being available for other people, Nan has run away from home – she drives wherever the road takes her, talking to strangers she meets along the way, stopping when and where she feels like, writing as she goes. Between letters to her husband and diary entries for herself, Nan reflects on her life, her sense of self, and works out what she wants from here.
I liked that some of Nan’s meetings are with characters from other Berg novels, offering us the slightest glimpses of aspects unseen in the novels where they star. I don’t know, having not yet read the entire Berg oeuvre, I all the characters have (or will have) their own books, but it added another layer and the presence of those I recognised was natural and unforced.
Berg’s gift is her ability to articulate the experience of being human, and particularly of being a woman – Nan is honest and unguarded, both in her behaviour and in her writing, and in the process is open to life. She decides to talk more to other women, and discovers truths she never suspected – like the universal experiences of motherhood:

when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with ‘Mommy’ embroidered over the left breast; over the heart… it wasn’t that I was really unhappy. It was the constancy of my load and the awesome importance of it; and it was my isolation…

I really can’t do justice to Berg’s work, at least not without quoting half the book. In no particular order, Nan reflects on the erosion by adulthood of life as a child, “like a wild, beating thing, exotic, capable of unfolding and enlarging itself; pulling itself higher and higher like a kite loved by the wind,” on the differences between men and women, in all aspects, and the nature of her marriage, and that menopause, the change that sparked Nan’s journey, can be the beginning of something new and not just an end.
This is explicit – in one of her meetings, Nan speaks with a man who reflects on his own mother: “

She launched herself into a new life where she felt she could say the hell with anything she didn’t like, and by god, she did say the hell with anything she didn’t like… She was really different, and at first this scared me, but then I realized I liked her better. She became a real person to me. She was interesting… And she was happy, I swear, until the day she died. We knew exactly who we were burying.

Above all, and a unifying theme, is the marginalizing of women –

the working hearts and minds of women are just so interesting, so full of color and life. And one of the most tragic things I’ve seen is the way that’s been overlooked, the way that if you try to discover what the women were doing at any given time in history, you are hard-pressed to find out. Why? I want to say to you that we are not silly, that what we think about, and what drives us to talk, talk, talk, this is vital.

As Nan points out, much of it we do ourselves – drop plans we crafted when a man says

’My God… you’re serious?’ And when he said that, I saw all that I had said in a different light, and I was so ashamed. I said, Well, no, not really.I don’t know why I did that. I hate that I did that.

Lynn is not the kind of woman whose opinions and plans are shaped by other people in this way (I can hear her now – “Yes, I am serious. Got a problem with it? I don’t care, it’s not your life – make your own plans”) but I am and, like Nan, I don’ even notice that’s what I’m doing. But, though not a universal story, I think this is a novel that will resonate with many women, and give some men an insight into the nature of being female. Go on now, read it - Alex

Dream When You’re Feeling Blue – Elizabeth Berg

Kitty Heaney, oldest daughter of three girls and two boys, is a little disappointed when her beau, Julian, is shipped overseas to fight without proposing, particularly as her younger sister Louise is engaged in all but name to Michael. As the impact of the war hits America increasingly hard, Kitty begins to transform from a self-absorbed girl into a woman who thinks before she acts and is aware of her impact on those around her. She leaves her office job to work in a manufacturing plant, to the ruin of her nails and the shock of her mother. She discovers that if letter writing is hard it may be because the feelings you think you have don’t really exist, and that other people can have feelings (and do things) you never guessed at. And she discovers that you can make sacrifices for those you love at great cost to yourself, sacrifices nobody else is ever aware of.
Opening in the early months of America’s entry into the Second World War, Dream When You’re Feeling Blue mirrors the nation’s loss of innocence with Kitty’s journey. Fiction is often a more resonant way of learning about the past than non-fiction, and Berg has woven substantial facts about the era into the prose, incorporating them into the substance of the text, so that (for example) the reader comes away with an impression not just the reality of rationing, women transitioning into non-traditional parts of the workforce, or changing mores, but the affects of these on the day-to-day lives of people. One aspect that I’d never really considered was the unrelenting impact on young children – as Kitty says,

the children’s programs on the radio offered no relief [from images of war and reminders to contribute to the war effort]: the Captain Midnight oath exhorting young listeners "to save my country from the dire peril it faces or perish in the attempt." Superman, with his long distance hearing and X-ray vision and supersonic flying speed, was now tracking down spies, as were the Green Hornet and Tom Mix.

Berg’s characters are real and rounded and complex. The Irish Catholic love of and for family resonates through Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, and informs the somewhat unexpected conclusion some sixty years after the novel opens. Lynn and I don't usually look at other people's opinions about the books we read, but I was interested in how others felt about the ending. I went to goodreads.com, where the response was indeed mixed. One review, cyears, articulates the issue perfectly:

Yes, if this were a romance, the ending would suck. But it's not. It's a character study of how an Irish-American family coped during the war. Life isn't fair, and it doesn't always end with orange blossoms and tulle veils.

Berg's novels sometimes contain romantic elements, but they're in no way romances, and I found the ending satisfying, for all the (articulately worded) reasons cyears gives. This was one of my favourite of her works thus far encountered. - Alex

We Are All Welcome Here - Elizabeth Berg

Diana Dunn's life is at first glance ordinary enough - growing up in Tupelo Mississippi (whose claim to fame is being the birthplace of Mr Elvis Presley) in 1964, her interests are like those of other girls her age. She likes sodas and looking at copies of movie magazines, and she puts on plays with her best friend Suralee. And in other ways her life is very different, because Diana's mother Paige is unique - she not only survived polio and escaped life in an iron lung, she also gave birth to Diana within the lung. And though she was abandoned by her husband, and is a quadriplegic confined to a chair, she's the strongest person Diana knows.
Diana's been brought up in equal parts by her mother and by their housekeeper, Peacie. Diana and Peacie rarely see eye to eye, but Diana adores Peacie's boyfriend, LaRue. And if she's honest, Peacie's better than the other carers her mother has. She's used to waking several times overnight to tend to her mother, as the state provides nowhere near enough to actually pay for twenty-four hour care, but since she was tiny Diana's known that has to be a secret from Susan, their case manager. And everything seems to be going smoothly enough, until the dawning Civil Rights movement combines with a falling out with Suralee, and everything Diana has known and taken for granted starts to fall apart.
I love Berg's books - I find her characters engaging and relatable, and her plots absorbing. We Are All Welcome Here is something of a departure form her usual writing style, as it was inspired by Marianne Raming Burke, whose mother Pat Raming was (like Paige) orphaned, adopted by parents who died when she was young, fostered, contracted polio while pregnant, abandond by her husband, and fought against everyone who said she couldn't raise her daughter.
This is an inspiring story, but perhaps this difference in origin is why I just didn't feel the Berg zing I've come to expect. I do in any case prefer her adult-narrated novels, but that aside I just felt a little disappointed by We Are All Welcome Here and I'm not sure why. Part of it is undoubtedly the narcissism inherent in many books with teen protagonists, and part of it is the somewhat deus ex machina ending, but there was something else that just didn't click for me. I've read a couple of novels lately that have been a little flat and am starting to think it's me rather than them. - Alex

The Art of Mending – Elizabeth Berg

Quilt maker Laura always thought she’d be the first of her siblings to get married – her childhood games most often revolved around domestic chores like cake making in her Easy Bake oven. Instead it was black sheep youngest Caroline who married first, when she was just twenty; Laura met her husband, widowed Pete, when she was forty, and he and her two children are all the more cherished for the wait. Their somewhat withholding brother Steve is up to his fourth wife, and his only children all have engines.
Every year the Bartone’s gather at the family home in Minnesota for the state fair, an event Laura anticipates with both excitement and dread. Her memories of the fair are happy, and she enjoys seeing the same love of rides and cotton candy in her children, but seeing Caroline is always hard work. This year promises to be more difficult than ever when Caroline calls the night before Laura, Pete, Hannah and Anthony leave for Minnesota – she wants to meet with Laura and Pete separately some time during the visit, to talk. Though Laura doesn’t know exactly what it’s about, she sound intense, and Laura knows it won’t be good.
Like all Berg’s books, the writing is superb – immediately engaging, detailed but not overworked, with characters that are complex and real. Unlike the writing of, say, Picoult, who tends to use large events (like school shootings, parental abduction, sibling organ donation, or infanticide) to examine the intricacies and contradictions of the human condition, the scale of The Art of Mending, like all the other books of hers that I’ve read, is domestic and relatively mundane. Yet it is this very ordinariness that illuminates the pivotal matters of significance in individual lives.
Few of us will be personally touched by the big events, but many of us will be fascinated by the different ways our friends or spouses grew up compared to our own upbringing, as Laura is by her Italian American husband’s – how different it would be, she thinks, to have been surrounded by the kind of open love her beloved parents-in-law radiate, compared to the distant love of her beautiful but removed mother and tentative father. Even closer to home, and at the centre of The Art of Mending, is the different memories our own siblings have of a shared childhood.
All families, all people have secrets, even the family Laura and Pete have created. Pete, for example, has a strong aversion to all epithets – he won’t tell Laura why, but even the use of “damn” makes him angry and sad. When Laura discovers why Pete reacts so strongly to swearing, it alters her view of things she had taken for granted, and allows some room for her to accept that not everything is as she assumes. As Pete says, “nobody knows what goes on in other families, because families lie about themselves to other people. Not only to other people but to one another. And to themselves.”
Interspersed between every few chapters are word pictures of family photos, pictures that not only describe what’s visible in the photo but what lead to that moment and with memories interwoven, that give hints about the secrets yet to be revealed.
When Laura, a maker of quilts, tells architect Caroline that their careers are similar – that they both make things out of raw materials, differing only in their composition, wood and cloth, Caroline has a different outlook:

I think it’s very different, I think I focus on seeing the actual substructure. You take things as they are and chop them up to re-create a new whole. And then you say, ‘See? That’s what it is!’… I want to know the truth of what’s beneath. You want to transform things into something comfortable and beautiful, but not what they are.

One of the beautiful things about discovering a new (to you) author is gorging on their back catalogue. I’m trying to dole out the Berg oeuvre slowly, but so far every one’s a hit, and The Art of Mending is something of a favourite. - Alex

Until the Real Thing Comes Along – Elizabeth Berg

Patty Murphy imagines her life as a mother – listening to fascinating fact about ants, waiting at home with her blond toddler for the older children to come home from school, watching her dark-haired daughter colouring with crayons. She wants a child with an almost visceral need, but Patty’s still single, and childless. She really wants to be a mother, but so far the closest thing she’s had to enduring relationship was with Ethan, and it broke her heart when he told her he was gay. He’s still her closest friend and confidant, and deep down Patty knows that if he could just love her everything would be fine.
I’m a little conflicted about my connection to the protagonist of Until the Real Thing Comes Along. I haven’t ever really felt a strong desire to have children, and my maternal needs are satisfied by the offspring of friends and siblings; this naked need made me uncomfortable – what is it that Patty thinks a child (or brood) will provide that will somehow complete her? All her fantasies are of harmony and Rockwell-esque portraits of family – is she prepared for less than perfect children? And what is she avoiding by continuing to pine for an unavailable man?
Berg’s gift is the touches of universal individuality. Despite this fundamental difference between us, there were many aspects of Patty that deeply resonated for me, including her status in the family. While:

I hate being the eldest. I hate being the only one who stayed, the one responsible for my parents while my sisters and brother do whatever they want. I hate being the only one unmarried and childless… the one they all worry about in ways that are just a little too-self-satisfied...

doesn’t wholly apply to me, enough of it does for it to ring true. And, like Patty, I used to feel pressure to buy something if I entered a shop, even if there was nothing there I wanted or needed.
Almost a decade old, there are a couple of passing notes that date the novel, primarily the outrageous idea that one might have a CD player in a car, but also the difference in landscapes between AIDS in the late ‘90s and now. For the most part, though, Berg’s writing is lucid, lyric and timeless, and beautifully combines poetry with pragmatism:

I realise I’m hungry. I hate when ordinary needs intrude on a melancholy reverie, but there you are, that’s a body for you.

- Alex

Never Change - Elizabeth Berg

Myra Lipinski has never demanded much of life. Her parents never really wanted her, she faded into the background at school, and she always figured that she didn't really deserve anything more. The bright spot in her life is her work - from the moment she began her nursing degree Myra was a star, captivated by the knowledge and skilled at the technical aspects, she moved from intensive care to home nursing, where her patients could speak to her and where she could see the impact she made on their lives.
When Myra's allocated a new, terminal patient, she's a little thrilled to find it's Chip Reardon, the boy she always dreamed of at high school. With only months to live, is it too late for Myra to find love?
Though more of a romance than any of Berg's other books, or at least those I've thus far read, Never Change is as much about the relationships Myra has with her patients, and with herself, as it is her developing relationship with Chip.
Like her other books, though, Never Change is lyric, seamlessly crafted, and vibrantly real. I found it easy to relate to Myra,. whose life is not so very different from mine in a number of respects (though quite different in others), and was interested in her journey. Though I've connected more strongly with other of Berg's protagonists, I did very much enjoy the Never Change experience - Alex

Home Safe - Elizabeth Berg

Helen Ames is still devastated by the sudden death of her husband over breakfast one morning - it may have been eleven months ago but the shock is as new as it was when she turned around to see him slumped on the floor. Dan took care of the details of their life together, leaving Helen to write the novels that contribute the bulk of their income. Since his death she just can't write, and though her publisher seems calm, she knows that's because they don't understand that Helen will never be able to write again - all the things that used to inspire and calm her now serve only to remind her of what's missing. And nothing works the way it used to, most of all her head, but also her relationship with her single daughter, Tess - whatever Helen tries to do seems to annoy Tess, and the harder she tries the angrier Tess gets, even though Helen's just trying to help.
When her accountant rings to say that Dan withdrew $750,000 almost a year ago, Helen's stunned. She can't imagine what he would have spent the money on, and over and over again in her mind she looks at the mild, loyal husband she thought she knew .
It was when I wrote up my end of year summary that I realised I hadn't read a single Berg novel in twelve months, and I'm so glad I returned. Her books may deal with serious, significant themes and devastating events but they're also uplifting, comforting and deeply satisfying. There were a couple of elements in Home Safe that particularly resonated with me - the first was the exploration of mother-daughter relationships, both Helen and Tess's but also the briefer but vibrant exploration of Helen's relationship with her mother, Eleanor. Reading these passages made me resolve to be more compassionate and giving in my own mother/daughter relationship, though that's sometimes easier in the abstract than in reality.
I also really liked the moment when the deeply feeling, sensitive Helen is confronted by her tolerant best friend Midge, who Helen thinks doesn't understand the depths of her despair and grief:

"Let me tell you something, Miss I-Feel-the-Pea. I feel the pea, too! All of us feel the pea! The difference is what each of us chooses to do about it!". ... Helen has always thought of herself as being different, as feeling more than others.
Sometimes she views it as a gift, more often as a curse. But it had not fully occurred to her, until now, that if someone doesn't react as she does, it doesn't mean they feel any differently...
"You know the story of the person who's thirsty?" Midge says. "Well, the person is complaining and complaining and complaining that she's so thirsty. 'Oh, my God, I'm thirsty, I am so thirsty. She's given a drink of water. And you know what happens then? She says, 'Oh, my God, I was thirsty, I was so thirsty!'"

And this is what I love about Berg's writing - it reflects truths about ourselves and others. Oh, and it's uplifting, comforting and deeply satisfying! - Alex

Range of Motion - Elizabeth Berg

Lainey simply can't believe that her husband could be taken from her by a freak accident. Yet there he is, in an impenetrable coma after being knocked out by a falling chunk of ice. Despite everyone's belief that she should accept he'll never recover, Lainey knows that if she can just make a connection, Jay will come back to her. Even after he's transferred to a nursing home, and despite the open scorn of many of the nursing staff, Lainey dresses Jay in familiar clothes, brings in his favourite foods, encourages her young daughters to visit, plays music, talks to him as though he never left his life, and performs the vital range of motion exercises that keep his limbs flexible for when he resumes his life. And through it all she rehearses how she'll tell the story of his recovery: "I turned an afternoon movie on his television. Black and white. Bette Davis. I started to tell his to pay attention, this was a good part, and he woke up. That's all. that's it. You just have to wait. You just have to believe."
But real life goes on despite her. Younger daughter Amy's started wetting the bed, older daughter Sarah's becoming combative and hostile, and Lainey's closest friend and neighbour, good hearted but plain Alice has issues of her own. And while they're something of a comfort, the visions Lainey has of the woman who used to live in their house are becoming clearer by the day, and when Evie starts talking to her Lainey feels alarmed as well as reassured.
The beauty of Berg's writing is its truth. When Lainey notes that her daughter "is turning into herself in these little ways. She is like stepping into a garden every day, when you know something is new, different from the day before" it so perfectly captures the infinitesimal but constant change of children that it rings. She observes the little moments and minute pleasures (accused of being "the kind of person who gets happy if the leftovers fit exactly into the Tupperware container," Lainey admits that she "get[s] a little charge when everything fits") as much as the devastation and ecstasy of the big things.
I was a little uncomfortable with Lainey's confidence in the face of Jay's diagnosis, and particularly wary of the novel giving false hope to the unfortunate families for whom an awakening will never come. I was also concerned about the other ending, of Lainey losing her hope and faith, of the extinguishing of her light. Though Range of Motion doesn't always go where I expected, and was a delight, I am still a little concerned about laypeople trusting more in hope than medical prognosis. On the other hand, I've seen enough doctors make enough unmet dire predictions to know that you never know, and that's part of what's at the heart of this very good novel. - Alex

Say When – Elizabeth Berg

Griffin knew that Ellen was seeing something, knew as he watched her prepare herself more elaborately for her auto mechanics course every week, but it still comes as an enormous shock when his wife tells him she wants a divorce. Okay, their marriage had problems, but what marriage doesn’t, and he was mostly happy. If it were just him affected maybe things would be different, but he’s not going to ignore the effect of this on their daughter, and so Griffin decides he won’t make things easy for Ellen – if she wants out of the marriage, she’ll have to be the one to move out of the family home, and he’s not going to cede custody.
As the months pass, Griffin refects on the relationship he has with Ellen, and with their daughter Zoe – on the history of their marriage and the parts they both played:

Griffin had his own relationship with [their parakeet] that was in no way inferior to the one Ellen had. It was just different. Did she ever think of that, that things experienced in ways different from hers were equally valuable?
That the way he chose to love her was, in fact, loving her, that the face of love depended on the person giving it? Couldn’t she see that the difficulty came not from her Griffin withholding but hr unwillingness to receive? But he would not confront her with this. Even a he tried to convince himself that it was true, he was aware of his own self-deception. He admitted, now, if only to himself, his catalogue of intentional slights, his moments of soft cruelty, his awareness of complicity in creating a relationship that could not work.

This is a story about people, love, self-awareness and growth. Berg articulates the divide between men and women, as well as the things that unite them, and despite the topic the novel is gentle and embracing. It’s also exceptionally well written and satisfying. - Alex

The Year of Pleasures - Elizabeth Berg

Betta Nolan knew on their second date that John was the man for her, and they had no need of anyone else until his far too early death. Now bereft and widowed, Betta honours John, and their relationship, by keeping her promise - she sells the Boston home they created, scatters (most of) his ashes, and drives until she finds a small town that feels like somewhere she can settle, and perhaps even live again. This is quite possibly the best depiction of grief and grieving I've read - not just the way it feels physically and intellectually, ("I saw that everything I'd ever imagined about what it would feel like when was pale. Was wrong. Was the shadow and not the mountain"), but the imposition of other people's ideas about your grief and how long you should mourn, reflections on your prior insensitivity ("How cruel we'd been... deciding how someone else should repair the rents in her own heart"), and the slow return of life.
Betta is an intriguing character, and Berg surrounds her with a village full of three dimensional people, from the bitter old woman she buys a house from to the new friends she makes and the old friendships she renews. The writing is spare but lyric, painting satisfying pictured without an unnecessary word. I came away from The Year of Pleasures replete, hopeful and happy with the resilience of the human spirit. - Alex

2008 in Review

Alex – My resolution to read fewer, but better quality, books went the way of most resolutions: of the 300 books I reviewed this year, 250 were fiction and 50 non-fiction (another year with no poetry), which is neat but coincidental!
Favourite novel: Underground – I read it early in 2008 and it stayed with me for the rest of the year, something of a measuring stick, and now (in the wake of political change both in Australia and the US) a reflection of a time that’s passed.
Favourite non-fiction book: this is far more difficult than picking a novel! I'm torn between Why We Buy, Better, How Doctors Think (by Jerome Groopman not Kathryn Montgomery), and the re-read The Tipping Point.
Favourite newly encountered author: a tie between the prolific Elizabeth Berg, the breathtakingly amusing Christopher Brookmyre, and Robert Muchamore, though I'm sure I'm forgetting several writers.
Most disappinting novel: Sandra Scopettone's Too Darn Hot: I love her contemporary stuff but this just left me cold
Least rewarding non-fiction book: a tie between Anything Goes by David Stove and An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David: my mother loves her work but it just didn't speak to me at all
Most disliked read: Will Self's Great Apes, and I barely made it to page ten.

And what does 2009 hold? I’d like to tackle some of the novels I’ve had on my To Read list for a while, including Anthony Powell’s 12-part A Dance to the Music of Time (my mother’s favourite books), Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (huge, but apparently worth it), and make some inroads in my own backlog of books, 2008 being the Year of the Library. I also plan to write my reviews contemporaneously, rather than saving them up for one mammoth reviewing session.

Lynn
When it comes to choosing a worst book of the year, my 2008 reading list leaves me spoilt for choice. Over the past twelve months I have been seduced by many a promising plot only to be disappointed by cardboard characters, poor writing, clichés and disbelief so suspended it snapped.
It has been a difficult decision but I have finally narrowed it down to my top, or should that be bottom, three books of 2008.
Coming in at number 3, the most boring book I read this year was L A Banks' Minion. How Banks manages to make a vampire huntress action adventure dull I don’t know. But she does. This book makes it no higher (or should that be lower) on my list because I read it with no expectations and so I was disappointed rather than annoyed.
At number 2, with possibly the worst ending to a book ever, was M J Rose, The Reincarnationist - A Novel of Suspense. I enjoy reincarnation as a plot device and could have forgiven a lot in my desire to like this book but somehow Rose manages to take a fascinating premise and turn it into a flat, convoluted mess. Going into this book actively favourable to its content yet still finding it annoyed the crap out of me, earns this book its number 2 position.
And with the dubious honour of being the worst book I read this year, coming in at number 1 was Allan Massie's Arthur the King. I am a fan of all things Arthurian and couldn’t count the number of retellings of the legends that I have read, from a wide variety of perspectives and with some wild interpretations. I am fairly forgiving of flaws in Arthurian works. I can tolerate a lot in the name of a new Arthurian variation. But I couldn’t even finish this book. When writing is so bad that I walk away from one of my favourite subjects that book deserves the title of Worst Of My Reading List for the Year.
Choosing a best book of the year was no easier. As I scanned my reading list there were several titles that brought a fond smile of remembrance to my lips but not many that had me thinking I would be sorry if I missed reading this book.
Naturally the superlative Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series features highly on my best books list but I have decided that the best book I read in 2008 was Phil Rickman’s December. While it was not perfect, indeed in some ways it was quite lacking, it was the one book that I recall coming to the end of and wishing wasn’t over quite yet.

True to Form – Elizabeth Berg

Katie Nash’s story, begun in Durable Goods and Joy School, continues - it's 1961, and Katie now lives in the mid-West with her warm stepmother and cold military father. Keen for a summer job and a little independence, Katie's unhappy but resigned when she discovers her father's already picked out a job for her - working as a carer for an elderly woman. The highlight of her summer is winning a radio contest - she can take a return flight anywhere, and choses Fort Hood, the home of her former best friend, the older and more experienced Cherylanne. The summer changes many things for Katie, most of all her awareness of the fragility of friendship and the enduringness of love.
The style is gentle and nostalgic, like a written version of an episode of The Wonder Years. The Katie trilogy is largely uneventful, and her voice is calm and deliberate, so that it's not until I reflected on the series that I registered how many life changing events its characters have gone through, and with what degrees of grace they have survived. - Alex

2009 in Review

Alex – Last year I aimed to make my way through some of my unread backlog, read my mother's favourite novels, the twelve-part Anthony Powell creation A Dance to the Music of Time, and tackle Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (huge, but apparently worth it). I was also going to review each book as I finished it.
Sadly, once again my resolutions were for naught. At the time of writing I'm just finishing writing up the dozen books read but unreviewed over the course of 2009. I read neither the Powell nor the Seth works, and my own unread book piles were added to rather than diminished even though I took a dozen or so overseas with me (and left them there). This year I will read a Powell book each month, and both Lynn and I have decided to alternate our own books with those from other sources like the library.
I did read marginally fewer books this year - of the 254 books I reviewed, 222 were fiction and only 32 non-fiction (and yet another year with no poetry, except by accident). I've been interested to see that the strength of the last part of the year has coloured my perception of the year as a whole, and I'd completely blanked out the odd run of books I hated or abandoned. Starting there we have:

Most disappointing novel: Dakota Cassidy's The Accidental Werewolf just didn't do it for me, particularly as it's one of only two books I recommended my library purchase. I thought Anton Strout's Dead to Me had more promise than it delivered, but did like the author's comment, which acknowledged that it wasn't for me without taking this on board as a vituperative attack on his very personhood (thank you, Anton).

Least rewarding non-fiction book: in a year where I put more books aside than ever before, the stand out of disappointment was probably Vera Brittain's autobiography Testament of Youth, mostly because I had quite high expectations which fell wholly flat.

Most disliked read: the Twilight series - I pushed myself until I just couldn't read any more of it.

Greatest achievement: an overseas trip forced me, by virtue of taking them with me and refusing to buy any other until they were read, to finally tackle half a dozen long unread members of my To Read pile. The three longest lingerers were John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (perhaps 15 years), Richard Adam's The Girl in a Swing (almost 30 years), and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, (some 20 years after buying it). Completing Eco's work is without question the triumph of my recreational reading year!

Favourite novel: No question the most compelling novel I read this year was Lionel Shriver's We Have to Talk About Kevin, a book so gripping it inspired me to start a book group (we meet for the first time next month and so far feedback's been mixed).
Favourite non-fiction book: I'm torn between the really compelling The Faith Club (by far my longest review this year), all of Danny Wallace's adventures, the always readable Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, and the Milton Erickson tribute My Voice Will Go With You. But the winner has to be The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge.
Favourite newly encountered author: I thoroughly enjoyed Kylie Chan's Dark Heavens trilogy, Linwood Barclay's atmospheric mysteries, and my belated discovery of the almost-Bagleyesque quality of Dick Francis's racing mysteries. Simon Kernick certainly warrants a follow up, as do Olive Etchells, CS Harris, Perri Klass and SM Stirling. But I think the winner is Carolyn Parkhurst, whose two, extremely different, novels were resonant reads that stayed with me long after they were finished and which I've recommended indiscriminately.
Interestingly, I realised writing this that I haven't read a single novel by Elizabeth Berg, my favourite author of 2008, but have recommended her to several people and sent my sister three of her books for Christmas.
Reviewing the year has reminded me of several authors I want to chase up in the year ahead, particularly CS Harris, Aimée and David Thurlo, Sean Doolittle, Ben Bova, Olive Etschells and Simon Kernick. As always the good news is that there are always great books being written and released, faster than I can read them. The bad news, of course, is that there are great books being written and released faster than I can read them - Alex

Lynn: My 2009 reading list has proved to be a rather uninspired one. With a couple of notable exceptions my book selections this year have been mediocre to poor. This has left me spoilt for choice when it comes to naming a worst book of the year.
My biggest disappointment would have to be Sandom’s The God Machine. I had such high hopes for this one but I found it to be a complete dud-a view not changed by the passionate arguments in support of it made here by the author (or author’s best friend, biggest fan, whatever).
But I feel it would be unfair to award this one the status of worst book read in 2009 because as a ‘did not finish’ I can’t claim to have actually read it.
So in a very closely run race the worst book I read in 2009 goes to The Eight by Katherine Neville. The sheer pointlessness of her work means she edges out Mary Gentle’s 1610: A Sundial in a Grave, which at least made some sense.
Strangely enough, choosing a best book I read in 2009 was not as easy as I thought it would be. Sure I could fall back on the tried and true Rickman or Greenwood, both of whom are consistently great but how could I choose between them. Take it as said that they rate right up there and with those two out of contention the very level playing field left meant that many could vie for the title. So for its warped and twisted fun I’m naming Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore my best read of 2009.
My favourite newly discovered (by me) writer for 2009 is a three way of historical romance authors. I was delighted to discover Pam Rosenthal, Jo Goodman and Joanna Bourne may their backlists be long and their careers longer.-Lynn

Joy School – Elizabeth Berg

In the sequel to Durable Goods, Katie Nash and her distant father have moved to Missouri. Her sister has eloped, her best friend is more preoccupied with her own life (and budding romances) than with supporting Katie, she doesn’t fit in at her new school, and her only new friend is the socially inept daughter of an overbearing and overprotective mother. When Katie finds a small, iced over pond to skate on her life changes in ways she didn’t expect – falling through the ice results in her meeting mechanic Jimmy. Though ten years older than Katie, and married, she falls in love for the first time.
Despite her lack of support, Katie finds her own way and her own mentors, including Catholic priest Father Compton who, though Katie’s not Catholic, is happy for her to visit the church and act as her spiritual adviser. She begins, with the help of housekeeper Ginger, to reshape her relationship with her father, and reflects on the nature of her friendships – with the clueless Cynthia, subtly patronisingly Cherylanne, and alluring model Taylor Sinn.
Joy School is a beautiful portrait of the ecstatic joy, crushing misery and lit purity of first love, the difficulties of adolescence, and the complexity of relationships. - Alex