An Old Favorite

The book I just finished, COME AGAIN NO MORE by Jack Todd (2010) was so enjoyable. One of his previous books, Sun Going Down, was critiqued on the back cover and compared quite favorably to Lonesome Dove, which is an all-time favorite of mine. That, in itself, is a funny thing as I don't like any of the other McMurtry books. I started reading Mr. Todd's book with no expectation of it being anything like Lonesome Dove. But it is! Hooray, Hooray! Now I've got to find Sun Going Down. If you like Lonesome Dove, or if you like McMurtry's books, you'll like this one.

Yeah for you, ladies

What a tremendous task our next writer set out for herself! She wrote a book about a female writer and the characters who line up outside her door every night, waiting for their turn to be written about. One man is so eager to have his story told that he jumps the line and gets into her house to plead with her about telling his story now. That's all fine, except that there is no story to be told until she writes it. The chapters go back and forth between him coming to her house and discussing upcoming possibilities, and the other chapters where he lives out what she has written. All this is told so smoothly that it's almost believable. The name of the book is BROKEN, written in Norwegian by Karin Fossum, translated by Charlotte Barslund (2006, 2008).
This is a very impressive piece of story-telling. We should all do so well.

Biochemist and Doctor???

Here's another one that is somewhat unusual, and also well- written. This one is HEALER by Carol Cassela (2010). It's the story of a small family with problems. The father is a biochemist who developed a new blood test for ovarian cancer, and its wide acceptance made the family rich. The mother is an almost-medical-doctor, who suspended the last tiny bit of her residency to take care of her premature baby, and never went back. The baby is now a healthy fourteen-year-old with more the the usual amount of disdain for her mom. In his enthusiasm for a new drug he has developed, the dad has mortgaged most of the family's possessions to get the money necessary for start-up expenses. Oh, oh.
They've lost their home and have had to move into a run-down house in the country that they had bought as a vacation home and intended to fix up. That's enough to tell you. It's a good book, and if you try it, you'll probably like it.