The Girl on the Train

So I have heard about this book for a while - it's been a NY Times bestseller for the longest time - but I just got around to reading it. And I just have to say wow.

Rachel is the girl on the train. She lives in suburban London and has lost her husband and her job because she has a drinking problem. But everyday she rides the train back and forth so her flatmate thinks she is going to work. One of the places where the train always stops has a row of houses where a seemingly perfect couple - and also Rachel's ex-husband, Tom, new wife, Anna, and baby  - live. Then the woman from the perfect couple disappears.

So Rachel knows that she was there at that train station the night the woman, Megan, disappeared, but she was so drunk she doesn't remember what happened. But she thinks she can help clear Megan's husband, Scott, of any suspicion, so she contacts him. Then the whole Rachel-Megan-Scott-Tom-Anna thing just gets crazy. I don't want to give anything away.

The novel is written from the different perspectives of the three women, mostly Rachel and Megan but a bit from Anna as well. I wasn't completely surprised by the ending but it did take me a bit to catch on. There's a very Gone Girl quality to the story that's quite appealing. It will be interesting to see how they make the movie work.

This was a great book, and I couldn't put it down.

The Girl on the Train

The Martian

I really enjoyed this movie, and my cousin's rocket-scientist kid recommended the book. He wasn't wrong, this is a great read.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, astronaut Mark Watney gets left behind on a manned mission to Mars when the rest of his crew thinks he has died. When he realizes he is alive and alone, he has to figure out how to survive. The problems - and there are many - include the fact that there is only enough food for 6 people for 100 days (or sols as they call them on Mars), and there is no way to get a rescue crew to Mars that quickly. Eventually he figures out how to establish communication with the folks at NASA, and a plan is established to get him home - provided he can keep himself alive long enough.

Mark is a great character with a wry sense of humor and amazing intelligence. I admit to skimming some of the more involved mechanical and scientific passages, but this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. If you saw the movie you'll notice that they left a bunch of stuff out, but they had to - it would have been a four hour movie if they hadn't.

The Martian

The Senator's Wife

This isn't a new novel, it's one I found on my ebook search of the library, from several years ago. And it takes place mostly in the 1990's so there's no social media or texting or smartphones, which is part of what makes it work.

Meri and Nathan are fairly newly married and very newly pregnant when they move next door to Delia, the wife of long-retired Democratic Senator Tom Naughton. Delia and Tom have been estranged for years, following his affair with their daughter's best friend, but they are still married and occasionally spend time together. The novel explores how Meri's and Delia's lives sort of parallel each other, even though they are separated by 30-plus years in age.

I loved the character of Delia, she's very spunky and spry and outspoken. Meri is harder to like but that's sort of the point - she has a neediness about her that is necessary to the story line.

I will say I wasn't really surprised by what happens at the end, but I was surprised by Delia's reaction to it.

All in all an enjoyable read.

The Senator's Wife

Killing Monica

So, this novel is by Candace Bushnell of Sex and the City fame. I have never read any of her novels and thought I would give it a try, since I liked the TV show (at least early on). Killing Monica is the story of Pandy Wallis, the author of a hit series of books about Monica and her escapades in New York City (made into a series of successful movies). After a bitter divorce and the rejection of her new non-Monica book by her publisher, Pandy winds up faking her own death, and adventure ensues.

I have to say I found this book REALLY hard to get into. It started kind of all over the place, and the characters of Pandy, her friends, and her husband Jonny, seemed superficial and not very likeable. But then when she fake died - which I thought was going to come much earlier in the novel - I really got into the story, and wanted to see how it played out. And the little surprise at the end with her sister Hellenor totally caught me off guard.

I'm going to say this is a beach read, and the kind of book I read in my twenties but am over now that I'm ... not in my twenties. And I definitely wouldn't see the movie.


Killing Monica

Rutherford Park

I picked up this novel by Elizabeth Cooke because the story was compared to Downton Abbey, and the writing was compared to several authors I've read and liked, including Catherine Cookson. Although the story took some time to draw me in, in the end I would say the comparisons were more than fair.

Rutherford Park is the story of the Cavendish family and their Yorkshire estate. Lord William Cavendish traces his family back for hundreds of years, but his much-younger-wife Octavia came from "trade" and was selected for her great fortune in mills, although they have over the course of their 20-year-marriage developed a fondness for each other, and have three almost-grown children. We meet them just on the verge of World War I... see, I could totally be talking about Downton Abbey right now, except that Cora came from America, not mill towns.

There are scandals and interesting below-stairs characters, too, and the house and grounds themselves are almost another character. As I said, I had difficulty getting into the story at first, and there are a lot of characters who make very brief appearances, so I found myself wondering, "which one was that again?" But by the end of the story I felt it actually ended too soon - I wanted more.

Rutherford Park

A God in Ruins

Okay, so if you've been following this blog for a while you know that I loved the last novel by Kate Atkinson I read, Life After Life, about a woman named Ursula who keeps getting reborn into the same life and living it in different ways. This novel is not a sequel, but more of a companion, and focuses on Ursula's younger brother Teddy.

Teddy is a hero of WW II, a bomber pilot who survives every mission and comes home to marry his childhood sweetheart, Nancy. Atkinson tells Teddy's story going back and forth between the past and the present, and also from various perspectives, like that of his daughter Viola. These are all richly developed, deeply real characters and I just couldn't put the book down (although I admit to skimming a bit through the more detailed bombing raids of the war).

While not as innovative as Life After Life, this is a beautifully written book that does have a surprise or two up its sleeve. I definitely recommend it.

A God in Ruins

The Dream Lover

That's kind of an odd title for a novel that is a fictionalized account of the life of George Sand (born Aurore Dupin). But it fits with Elizabeth Berg's depiction of George as always searching for - and never finding - that perfect lover one has in dreams.

I started the novel knowing basically nothing about George Sand except that she was a French female author who changed her name to a man's name, liked to dress in men's clothing, and had an affair with Chopin. I've never read anything she's written, and honestly this book didn't make me want to read her complete works. But it's an intriguing look at a person who was at the heart of the mid-nineteenth century French arts scene, hanging out with people like Delacroix and Victor Hugo, and who was very controversial for the time (smoking tobacco in public - the horror!).

Berg is a very good writer who paints beautiful scenes and develops strong characters. I particularly enjoyed her depictions of George Sand, Marie Dorval, and Frederic Chopin. Berg does a good job of taking one or two known characteristics of historical figures and making a fully developed person out of them. I really enjoyed this novel.

The Dream Lover