Category: book reviews

At least half of the members of our book club are teachers, or have been at some point. And those of us who aren’t happen to enjoy a good prep school book every once in awhile, so this was a natural selection for us.

The simple storyline of this book is as follows: a recent Columbia graduate, Anna Taggert is passionate about teaching despite her parents’ protests about it being a waste of her Ivy League degree. She finds herself lucky to receive a position at a Manhattan Upper East Side private school, but soon discovers it’s nothing like she expected.

First of all, she lives in what she considers poverty. Then the administration comes down hard on her when she starts teaching “real” lessons, saying that she’s trying to make the rest of them look bad. Everything caters to the families who are listed as “Friends” of the school (aka those who donate the most money). Her students boss her around, her students’ parents bribe her and threaten her, and she is pressured into not giving actual grades. More outrageous stuff happens.

But then Anna discovers the mysterious and lucrative tutoring world. As soon as she realizes she can score $200 an hour or more, she’s hooked. She balks a little at first when she is slowly suckered into actually DOING her clients’ homework, but the justifications soon set in. Before long she’s not only a part of the private school world that she despised, she’s the epitome of it.

Schooled was a quick, easy read that I found myself mildly fascinated with and appalled by. But in the end, it was too shallow. We only get to know a few characters, and they are one-sided. No real relationships are formed. There is a single plot without any depth. Although it was written to make a point, I have my doubts as to how realistic the story actually is.

We get a picture of students who can barely write a coherent paragraph being carried through the most prestigious schools because tutors are doing their work for them. They make it into Ivy League schools and land big-wig jobs simply because of their name or their family’s money. While that may happen on occasion, I don’t think it happens in such a general way as this book made it seem.

In the end, Anna returns to her morals and figures out a way to actually teach. The problem is, her solution was obvious from the very beginning.

***

If you’d like to read along, next month’s book is Labor Day by Joyce Maynard.

I finished reading A Reliable Wife a couple of weeks ago, but we just had our book club meeting this week. I suggested this one based on the description of it, and I had high expectations. It sounded to me like one of my favorite novels of all time, Rebecca. I love a good romantic mystery.

The story is about a rich businessman named Ralph Truitt who has had a difficult life, and has been living alone in rural Wisconsin for years. Finally he can stand it no longer, and places an ad in the paper for “a reliable wife” motivated by practical, not romantic, reasons. A young woman named Catherine Land accepts his offer, although her plan is to slowly poison him with arsenic and inherit his wealth. But she is unaware that Truitt has his own plans for her.

Overall I liked the book okay, and it was a quick read, but unfortunately it did not meet my expectations. For one thing, I wish it had left more to the imagination. I think Truitt’s lustiness was overdone in the beginning, and the salaciousness of Catherine and her lover was kind of disgusting. There was no buildup of sexual tension, it was just…there.

Also, there were aspects to the writing style that bothered me. The author used a lot of short sentences, which at times felt choppy. I also noticed that he would make drastic, sudden, absolute statements about a character which would be reversed on the next page. It was strange.

I will say that the rest of the members of my book club really liked the story, and it is kind of haunting. I think I was just expecting too much, so I give it three stars. If you’ve read it, let me know what you think.

When this book was first suggested as our book club read, I had never heard of it before and my first thought was, “What kind of name is that?” Little did I know that this book is actually extremely popular and highly rated. I’m glad I knew nothing of it, because I had no expectations going in.

The story is set in immediate post-WWII Britain. It revolves around Juliet, a woman in her early 30’s who has recently published a successful novel. She receives a letter from a man named Dawsey who lives on the British island of Guernsey, which is the only part of England that was occupied by the Nazis during the war. Dawsey bought a used book that had Juliet’s name and address inside, and he writes her to ask questions about the author. Juliet begins a correspondence with him, and subsequently with Dawsey’s neighbors and friends as well. Through this we learn all about the lives of the inhabitants of Guernsey during the occupation, and how literature helped them through it.

The book is made up entirely of letters between the characters, all who are extremely witty. I’m kind of in love with some of them. Though it may be a tad unrealistic, it is charming and adorable to read. And, thank goodness, there is a happy ending–my favorite kind. The whole thing made me want to sit down and write long, handwritten letters to strangers. (I won’t do that, though. My husband wouldn’t approve.)

I give it 4 out of 5 stars, and definitely recommend it as a quick and enjoyable read. (For the record, some of my real-life book club members loved this book even more than I did.)

Midwives is told from the point of view of Connie, the 14-year-old daughter of Sybil, a lay midwife in northern Vermont in the early 1980’s. Sybil is an experienced and respected midwife, a hippie who is passionate about what she does. One terrible night she finds herself at a home birth that goes terribly wrong, and she is unable to transport the mother to the hospital due to a storm. Sybil makes the decision to do a C-section on the mother, who she believes is dead, in order to save the baby, which she does. Later, her assistant and the father of the baby second-guess her and claim that the mother was not, in fact, dead. This book is the story of that incident, Sybil’s subsequent trial, and the impact of the event on her family.

First of all, the story is extremely well-written. It doesn’t feel at all like your typical courtroom drama. Overall I found it was primarily a story about Connie and her family during this tumultuous time. The author included many small anecdotes along the way which weren’t necessarily important to the plot, but developed the characters and served to help the reader get an accurate feeling of what their family life was like. For example, near the end of the trial when things are the most stressful (page 249 my version), Connie tells us about how her father has three dozen roses with intricate cards he made himself waiting for her mother when they get home. She tells us how her mother is still talking about it later that night, and how she brags about her father to her friends. I love that. I love how it shows the strength of their marriage despite all the obvious threats to it.

Giving away the ending now, I was actually very surprised that Sybil was acquitted. Although I’m not the type of person who tries to figure things out ahead of time (maybe that’s why I loved The Complete Sherlock Holmes so much, because the endings had me going “aha!” every time), I thought that there was heavy foreshadowing that she would be convicted. (But maybe I’m just dense.) Although I believe that the mother probably was technically alive when the C-section was done (especially based on Sybil’s final journal entry in which it is revealed she saw the body “flinch”), I agree that she shouldn’t have been convicted because of reasonable doubt. She didn’t do anything out of malicious intent, and ended up giving up her practice anyway.

On the whole I liked all of the main characters. I found the attorney Stephen Hastings extremely likeable. I got mad at the father of the baby and Sybil’s assistant Ann for turning on her, even though they were the ones that gave her the knife, and did nothing to stop her. Sybil’s husband was so sweet, a man that you would want by your side during an ordeal such as this one.

When a book is written in first person, I find that if I like the narrator it makes a huge difference. I liked Connie. She spoke looking back on the incident, from her 30’s, having gone to medical school to become an OB/GYN. I felt that she had a good understanding of her own bias, but the story itself represented both sides of the issue fairly equally. I could see how someone would finish this book being completely sympathetic to midwives and love the idea of a home birth, but on the other hand I know that someone could read it and be totally turned off to the whole thing, thinking it is irresponsible. I have, in fact, heard both reactions.

The idea of home births and midwives is controversial. I can’t help but thinking about the Gilmore Girls episode where Sookie (Lorelai’s best friend) uses a midwife. This explains it pretty well:

Jackson: So I got the plastic sheet on the bed, it fits perfectly.
Sookie: Excellent!
Lorelai: What’s that for?
J: She doesn’t know?
L: Know about what?
S: You ready? This is big. It’s really good and I want you to just slowly drink it in, no big gulps.
L: I’m ready to take a sip.
S: We’re skipping the hospital and having the baby here!
L: Here in your house?
S: In our bed!
L: Hence the sheet.
J: Got a honey of a sheet, it’s the top of the line. Little thing’ll come out and carry him right into the catcher’s arms.
L: While we all yell, “Hey batter batter batter”?
S: He means the midwife. Got the best one on the eastern seaboard!
J: You look mystified.
L: No! It’s just that…you guys have done lots of research on this, right?
S: Millions of babies have been born this way!
J: It’s a great tradition.
S: And hospitals are so cold, you know, so full of infections.
J: And dead people.
S: And sometimes the dead people have infections.
J: And if they’re not dead yet, they die.
L: All true.
J: But the best thing about having little Davey or Colgate here: zero chance of bringing home the wrong baby. What comes out of her here, stays here!

Lots of things about home birth appeal to me, other than making sure I get the right baby. Actually, the only thing I really have any objection to at all is using a lay midwife. I understand that experience counts for a whole lot, but I also think that there is a reason people are trained for years in medicine or nursing. If I were to have a home birth, I would use a medically trained midwife. I am obviously very comfortable in a hospital though, so I’ll probably just end up having my future babies there, if God chooses to grant me any. But, alas, that decision does not need to be made now.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. Anyone out there read it? What are your thoughts?

Next month’s book is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This year’s Pullitzer Prize winner!