![]() ![]() Spot art by the author’s husband, occasional lists in Madeline’s handwriting, emails, and instant-messaging transcripts add a lively dimension to Madeline’s quirky character. She confides to her wise and understanding nurse, Carla, the truth she keeps from her overprotective mother: that it’s painfully hard to be a teenager with a crush, yearning to venture outside and experience the world. Madeline-half Japanese, half African-American-chronicles her efforts to get to know Olly as she considers risking everything to be with him. ![]() With the help of an indestructible Bundt cake, Olly perseveres until he gets her email address. Olly, a white boy “with a pale honey tan” and parcours moves, wants to meet her, but Madeline’s mother turns him away. ![]() Her life is turned upside down when a troubled new family moves in next door and she sees Olly for the first time. Madeline is a bright, witty young woman who makes the best of life with a compromised immune system by playing games with her mother, studying with online tutors, and writing brief spoiler book reviews on Tumblr. Suffering from “bubble baby disease,” Madeline has lived for 18 years in a sterile, sealed house with her physician mother. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() The first time I read Watermelon, and there have been several readings over the years, I was enamoured by Keyes’ writing. I read it quite some time after she had made a name for herself with Rachel’s Holiday. MY THOUGHTS: This was the first book by Marian Keyes that I ever read. So much so, in fact, that when James slithers back into her life, he’s in for a bit of a surprise. And there, sheltered by the love of a quirky family, she gets better. Claire is left with a newborn daughter, a broken heart, and a postpartum body that she can hardly bear to look at. Then, on the day she gives birth to their first baby, James informs her that he’s leaving her. As he was present at the birth, I can only assume the two events weren’t entirely unrelated.ĪBOUT THIS BOOK: Claire has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores, a great apartment, a good job. It is the day I gave birth to my first child. EXCERPT: February fifteenth is a very special day for me. ![]() ![]() ![]() Santmyer’s book achieved its exalted best-seller status when its author was in her 80’s – a fact that I hope will remind all you writers out there to keep writing and never give up. And judging from Ohio Town, Helen Hooven Santmyer’s appealing memoir about growing up in the southwest Ohio community of Xenia, an Ohio town is a pleasant place indeed in which to spend one’s childhood.Īuthor Santmyer is probably best known for her 1985 bestseller “…And Ladies of the Club.” That book, the story of a women’s literary and community-service club in the fictional town of Worthington, Ohio, is one that I am sure was read by a lot of ladies in a lot of clubs, as it was, in its time, the largest-selling paperback ever. Its small towns are particularly pleasant places – neat little rectilinear communities nestled among the tidy farms, rolling hills, and meandering waterways of the Buckeye State. Ohio is such a beautiful state – heart-shaped (the signs at the state line say “Ohio – The Heart of It All!”), with the Ohio River forming its entire southern border. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local peasants who befriend the family. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spyros "Americano" Chalikiopoulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell. A heartfelt and warming account of island life that impacted significantly on tourism in Corfu, this memoir is one for listeners all ages and inclinations. Durrell's autobiographical account of his childhood, concentrating on his time spent in Corfu 1935-39, is rich with both humour and naturalist observations on the ecosystems and nature of the island. My Family and Other Animalsis the bewitching account of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British conservationist Gerald. This memoir is soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy, surrounded by his eccentric family - as well as puppies, toads. ![]() |