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On My Bookshelf this month:
The Nightingale | The story of two sisters in occupied France during World War II, and the role they each play in the French Resistance. I have been obsessed with WWII novels this year, and this is my favorite of all that I have read. It is a beautiful story of strength, courage, love and survival, and left me in tears at the end. | “If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
Unbecoming | A girl from small town Tennessee plans a robbery, then escapes to Prague with a stolen painting as her husband and his best friend go to jail for the crime. Not spectacular, but interesting enough. | “Real liars don’t lie about anything, they just lie. ‘About’ is a word liars use to justify their lying, to make it seem like a localized problem…With a liar, you can never know the whole truth, ever. You can’t ever be sure that this version is the real version. There is no end, no bottom. Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a hoax.”
The Girls From Corona del Mar | A very real and somewhat depressing look at a lifelong friendship between two girls. One seemingly perfect, who hits a string of bad luck that never really ends, and her flawed best friend from a dysfunctional family, who in the end realizes that you can never really know another person. | “What had been so funny? But you can never remember what you were laughing about, and even if you could, it seems doubtful that it would still be funny.”
Remember Me Like This | An 11 year old boy disappears, and as the years go by, his family never gives up hope of finding him. After 4 years, he is miraculously found in a neighboring town, having been abducted by a violent pedophile. But instead of this being the happy ending, the book explores how this affects each of the members of his family. | “Those four years had gutted her family. How could she not understand such hideous gravity? Everywhere she looked, the absolute and crushing weight of the past. At times she’d been bloated with sadness, leaden and unmovable. Other times, she would have sworn she was a sieve…Life started to feel – what? Not normal. Not familiar. Inhabitable. Navigable.” “The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all.”
I’m always looking for good book recommendations! What are your favorites?
