Read it or Weep

My Summer Reading August 12, 2009

Here is a selection of what I’ve been reading this summer. Some of the books are so good that I dreaded coming to the end.

The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty speaks to everyone, especially women. In a moment of inattentiveness, teenager Kara Churchill hits and kills a pedestrian (another student) in a traffic accident, and from that moment on the rest of her life changes. With insight, grace, and pain, Moriarty probes mother-daughter relationships and family relationships in the wake of tragedy. This is Laura Moriarty’s second novel, and it’s another stunning achievement. I discovered Laura Moriarty when she wrote her first novel, The Center of Everything. I’m happy that her third book, While I’m Falling, has just been released.

The Family Man, Elinor Lipman’s latest, is lots of fun. Bachelor Henry Archer finds his life enriched when he gradually changes his lifestyle from single lonely man, to attached with a family, albeit an unconventional one. With Lipman, expect the laugh-out- loud humorous observations of mother-daughter and family relationships as well as society in general.

I’ve been saving Ice Run by Steve Hamilton because it’s the last Alex McKnight book he’s written. This book is so descriptive of place (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and southern Ontario) and setting (a cold snowy February), that even if you read it in the middle of summer, it will make you shiver. Alex McKnight has a new girlfriend, Natalie, a woman who is an Ontario Provincial Police officer. Their relationship is very sudden, very intense. But of course if you’ve read previous books in the series you know that Alex is going to find his way to trouble- and as often as not through no fault of his own. This time trouble begins at the Ojibway Hotel in Sault St. Marie, Michigan (the Soo) when an old man watches Alex while he’s there with Natalie. Later he delivers a hat to them saying, “I know who you are.” The next day the old man is found dead, frozen to death on the cold streets of the winter Soo. The non-stop pace of this mystery/thriller will chill you to the bone.

I couldn’t put Liz Rigbey’s Summertime down. Her first book, Total Eclipse, written in 1995, was equally a page-turner. In this book, the lovely and lonely northern California coastal region is the setting. Lucy returns to California after a three year hiatus when her father mysteriously dies. Tragedies and stories from the past muddy the waters of the present in this wonderful mystery. I can’t find much information about author Liz Rigbey, but sure wish she’d write another book!

~Ann