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Picture Perfect: A Giveaway

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Hey all, this one is a giveaway too, so don’t forget to read to the end to enter. Picture Perfect is one of my fave author, Jodi Picoult’s, earlier books. As I am steadily working my way through every novel she has ever written I felt the need to read and review this one recently. It isn’t the grabbiest or most topical of all Picoult’s books, but the slight parallels to a certain A-List Hollywood celebrity couple made it relevant and interesting to me.
At the start of this novel is a mystery. A half-dead woman is found in a cemetery. Her head is wounded. She is discovered by a grave and has no inkling how she got there or why she is there, nor does she know her name. A conflicted native American police officer takes her in and tried to help her find the truth. He calls her Jane and along the way, as he helps her to find out about her history, he naturally falls for her romantically. Cassie Barrett is a world-renowned anthropologist when she meets the legendary Alex Rivers. (Think Brad Pitt with a mean-spirited side.) She has been hired by the movie he is working on to give technical advice. He sweeps her off her feet and she is easily charmed, but it is not long before his temper flares and she tries to make excuses. Soon a pattern of abuse is evident to have followed Rivers from his past and extended well into his future. It is a pattern Cassie believes she can cure. As in many Picoult novels a subtheme echoes and crosses through the main plot of the novel. The native American police officer Will pops in and out of the book weaving strong themes of nature and healing and aboriginal folklore. He is, in many ways Cassie’s saviour and a very strong character. Picture Perfect is the story of a couple who to the world and the media appear to be golden and yet, in reality, they are deeply flawed personalities that feed each other’s weaknesses. They are simply combustible together. This is a compelling story and it is, as usual really well written. Picoult is the author of many other novels, including The Tenth Circle, House Rules, Faith, Mercy and My Sister’s Keeper.

Picture Perfect is worth $$$$ out of $$$$$. It is published by Berkely, Penguin Group USA, 1995. $15 US and $18 Canadian.

I am giving away one copy of this novel. I will draw for the winner June 24th with random.org. Open to all US and Canada.
To enter:
1. Leave a comment here indicating that you want to enter the giveaway. Tell me if you have read any other Jodi Picoult books and, if so, which was your favourite.
2. Follow me on twitter @inkscrblr.
3. Visit http://www.thriftymommastips.blogspot.com/ and leave a comment.
4. For an extra chance at winning follow me on GoogleFriendConnect.

Even The Dogs

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If this book were a person it would be your rambling Uncle Reggie with all the skeletons in his closet, you know the relative with a genius level IQ and possibly undiagnosed schizophrenia, the guy that drank it all away and then showed up at Christmas to start a fight. Nobody really likes to be around Uncle Reggie, because he reminds them how fragile the balance of mental health and life, but in reality at the end of the day when you are quiet with just your thoughts, even you have got to admit that Uncle Reggie is far more interesting than all the rest of your relatives combined. At the start of Even The Dogs, is the death of a homeless man, Robert, a person found on a day between Christmas and New Year’s inside an abandoned apartment building. The fictional story that arises out of this sad event is more real than most. What follows is a makeshift eulogy, a strange remembrance of the pitiful man who died, as told by his friends and acquaintances. The key here is the friends and acquaintances. They are each homeless addicts living on the fringes of society, drugged and searching for drugs, drying out and then checking into rehab and then relapsing again. Their remembrances are heartfelt to be sure, but also dreamy, nebulous, frantic, rushed, interrupted, disjointed, confused, urgent, pressured and half forgotten. “Had to find someone and tell them was all he could think. Had to find Laura and let her know, had to find Mike.” We are told Robert had a daughter named Laura and her father’s friends speculate where she might have gone, until the end of the novel when she is forced to reveal, at an inquest, that she abandoned her father to score drugs.

Even The Dogs is an odd novel at first to get into and slightly off-putting with strange use of punctuation and rambling sentences and the continuous use of the pronoun “we.” And yet, if you stick with it and invest yourself fully, by the end of the book all of these stylistic devices truly make sense. In fact, not unlike a drug, when you let this novel fully wash over you, the brilliance of it hits and you are left in awe. Jon McGregor’s latest tale appeared with much advance praise and buzz about the Booker prize and yet it is a difficult read. It is one of the more deceptive reads I’ve been given lately for review here at brainfood. The style is very evocative of the Virginia Woolf school of stream-of-consciousness and this reminded me a great deal of some of the duty reads from university English literature classes of years gone by.  At first it left me cold and then I realized that was partly the point. You are supposed to feel hot and cold about the topic matter at hand and the death of a homeless drunk is really not poetry to most. He will be given a pauper’s funeral and his friends wonder at the sadness and hopelessness at the end of this lifeMcGregor is a stylist of the highest calibre and  a writer’s writer for sure. Here we will find sentences paused mid-thought, punctuation dropped or forgotten, mishmashed grammar and rambling odd rants about life on the street. McGregor’s characters have strong voices and his talent for dialect is nothing, if not realistic. McGregor has also written If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways To Begin. He has won the Somerset Maugham Award and The Betty Trask Prize. He was born in Bermuda and now lives in England.

thriftymommastips rating $$$$ out of $$$$$
Not for everyone, but realistic, highly intelligent and brave writing.
Bloomsbury USA New York, 2010, $17.50 Canada. $14 US.

The White Queen: Contest

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Popped by the Simon and Schuster Canada site this morning and found this new contest you might want to enter. You and your friends can each have a copy of this promising new novel from Philippa Gregory. Gregory is a New York Times Bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl. Visit Simon and Schuster Canada site and enter the contest to win 10 copies for your book club. If I win I will share them with you and kick off our own book club. Good Luck and Happy reading! Visit http://www.simonandschuster.ca/ to enter.

The Forty Rules Of Love

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A truly good story takes you on a voyage to a place you didn’t know you wanted to visit. The Forty Rules of Love is just that kind of story; reading it is just that kind of journey. Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s best-selling female authors. Up until I received this novel, her latest, The Forty Rules of Love, I had never heard of Shafak and that’s a shame really. Shafak is a gifted storyteller. The Forty Rules of Love consists of two parallel stories, one of which is set in contemporary time and the other of which takes place in the 13th century. The contemporary plot revolves around a housewife, Ella, about to turn 40, who is hired as a reader for a literary agent to read a book dubbed Sweet Blasphemy. Ella is a realist or so she thinks at the start of the book when she begins reading a new novelist’s rumination. The Forty Rules of Love is in some ways her coming of age story. Quickly Ella falls in love with the prose in the novel she reviews and then reaches out to the author through email beginning a relationship. But what sort of relationship will it be? That remains up to Ella, taken by the writing of this new author Aziz. She knows little of him but his talent and this portion of the book is told in a nouveau sort of epistolary for our times – through written emails to each other. Their emails grow increasingly amorous. “Her first email to Aziz was not a letter so much as an invitation, a cry for help. But Ella had no way of knowing this as she sat in the silence of her kitchen and composed a note to an unknown writer she didn’t expect to meet now or any time in the future.” The plot within Sweet Blasphemy revolves around the Sufi poet Rumi and his spiritual encounter with Shams of Tabriz. As Shams schools Rumi in spiritual matters he learns to open his mind more fully to that which he cannot see or touch and he realizes his life has been missing a key ingredient. Ella, in the contemporary plot line, can be seen to follow the same story arc only with a more romantic outcome. As Shams unveils each of his rules of love to Rumi, Ella and Aziz can be seen experiencing, internalizing and reacting to the fictional rules as their own. There is a certain subtle magic realism about this novel, not as overt as the Latin American authors who perfected the genre, but gentler and slightly more spiritual in nature. Perhaps that’s another reason I so enjoyed this book. The characters in this book are beautifully illustrated and the narrative at times complex, but not so as to detract from the read, only so that it illuminates the strength of the writer’s talent. In the end there is an unexpected twist and prose so lovely and insightful that it is also slightly heartbreaking. The Forty Rules of Love is more than a great love story: it is also an intriguing look at the intimate relationship that can exist between author and reader, writer and reviewer.
The Forty Rules of Love, 2010, Viking, $32.50 Canadian and $25.95 US.
Thriftymommastips’ rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$
thriftymomma is not compensated for her reviews, but receives a copy of the books she reviews.

House Rules

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It’s no big secret really that I want to be Jodi Picoult when I grow up. This journalist turned author is one of my all time favourite contemporary authors. House Rules is yet another topical, well researched, beautifully written story that makes me yearn for more as soon as I have turned the last page. While the plot of House Rules centres around the CSI obsessed Jacob, a teenager with Asperger’s, a high functioning form of autism, it is equally the story of the mother and his sibling Theo. This is the story of a family dealing with a child who has special needs and perhaps that’s why I so eagerly nabbed this one when I discovered it at the London Public Library. My own daughter has sensory processing disorder amongst other diagnoses, so Jacob gave me some excellent insights into what makes her tick and also explode into meltdown. The mother Emma is such a vivid character that she could be any one of the mothers I know dealing with the challenges of parenting children who have special needs. Jacob’s social skills tutor Jess is found dead and suspicion quickly falls on Jacob, whose disability makes him appear a perfect suspect. Asperger’s is categorized by social skills deficits, high intelligence, flat tone and affect, lack of empathy for others. To outsiders – lawyers, jurors and police officers – Jacob appears calculating and cold. The trial that ensues here is a huge portion of the plot and that can be tedious in some novels. However, Picoult is quite able to balance multiple competing viewpoints by allowing the trial to take centre stage in the last half of the book. It is an effective plot device. It is a remarkably realistic insight she gives us into the minds of lawmakers, some too slow to change or comprehend grey areas of law and life. Picoult is excellent at illuminating the very nature of invisible disabilities. Some of the characters are able to see Jacob’s strengths and differences and others believe him to be a liar. This novel does not contain Picoult’s best writing, but it does contain some of her most memorable characters. Jacob is incredibly compelling and through this character Picoult brings unique and perceptive insights into autism and sensory processing dysfunctions. “These are some things I can’t really stand,” he lists. ” 1. The sound of paper being crumpled. I can’t tell you why, but it makes me feel like someone’s doing that to all my internal organs.” House Rules casts light on how we as a society are still lacking compassion and ability to embrace differences. Emma’s job as a columnist is revoked during the trial for instance by the very people who believe they are supportive of families with special needs. She is a single mother existing on fumes and cannot get a bank loan to pay her lawyer. She has spent a lifetime crafting her son’s environment so that he can function and avoid sensory overload. For instance Tuesdays are red food only days. When Oliver the lawyer enters their world he gives us fresh eyes through which the reader can see, at once how essential it is to have red Tuesdays for Emma and her family, and yet how absurd at the same time that a life must be lived within such parameters. My only criticism of this novel is that I saw the ending coming and usually Picoult is able to deal a surprising twist at the end of her books – as in My Sister’s Keeper, which had such a tour de force ending I felt gobsmacked for days after I finished the book.

House Rules, $32.00 Canadian $28. U.S.
SimonandSchuster publishing, Atria Books, 2010

thriftymommastips rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$

Still Alice

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Still Alice by Lisa Genova is a lovely, bittersweet, insightful l look, at the devastating diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Alice Howland, an accomplished Harvard professor, is barely 50 when she starts to realize her brain is beginnning to fail her. Forgetfulness is becoming an issue. She often is at a loss for words and occasionally becomes lost at work on the campus near the university where she teaches. She loses her place in a telephone conversation with her grown children often and simply isn’t as sharp as she once was. These small blips require further investigation and so she reluctantly and, with disbelief, consults her doctor. The diagnosis, while shocking, isn’t completely a surprise as Alice seems to know in her gut that something is wrong long before it is given a name. Early-onset Alzheimer’s. She keeps the diagnosis to herself for far too long, until she is no longer able. When she shares the devastating news with family, they react in their own ways, each one revealing different facets of the disease. To Alice’s oldest daughter it is particularly frightening as she becomes pregnant and worries the genes might be passed to her twins. Projecting into the future she also worries she may someday be a burden to her own children if she develops symptoms. Youngest child Lydia, the artistic actress, surprisingly rises to the challenge as caregiver of her mother. Their bond is strengthened by the mother’s vulnerability. Lydia chooses not to have the testing that would reveal her future health. Her brother Tom carries survivor guilt of sorts when it is revealed that he should not get Alzheimer’s. Her husband, John, a brilliant doctor, hides his feelings and refuses to believe his wife may someday be unable to remember his name. He is a secondary character at best in this story and he is sometimes unlikeable as the heartbroken husband struggling to decide if he can manage his feelings while unable, at times, to see the essence of Alice beneath the deterioration. John chooses work as a refuge from his homebound formerly vibrant wife. “If I am in lab, I don’t have to watch you sticking Post-it notes on all the cabinets and doors. I can’t just stay home and watch you get worse. It kills me.” can’t take it Alice. The impact on Alice’s family is dealt with nicely here in this novel, as each of Alice’s children struggle to decide if they will be tested for genetic markers that will tell them whether they may develop the same terrible disease. But it is Alice’s story that clearly dominates the novel and her character we feel for all throughout her sad journey. While this is a fictional story, Genova, who has a PHD in neuroscience from Harvard University, is an expert on the details of this disease, and I loved that I learned so much about the inner workings of the brain from this book. This book has all of the elements of a good story and has won a few accolades along the way including the 2008 Bronte prize and yet I felt the writing lacked sophistication and style. This is a great story and it is nicely written and I would recommend it to almost anyone, but the writing is simply good, not great.  

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova is published by Simon and Schuster, New York 2007
The Mass Market edition was $10.99 in Canada.
thriftymommastips rating $$$$ out of $$$$$.

Thriftymommastips did not receive any compensation for this review