The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat

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Posted on April 26, 2013

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat

by Edward Kelsey Moore

published by Alfred A. Knopf

2013

Summary

Meet Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. . .

Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is home away from home for this inseparable Plainview, Indiana, trio. Dubbed “the Supremes” by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they weather life’s storms together for the next four decades. Now, during their most challenging year yet, dutiful, proud, and talented Clarice must struggle to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband’s humiliating infidelities. Beautiful, fragile Barbara Jean is rocked by the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair. And fearless Odette engages in the most terrifying battle of her life while contending with the idea that she has inherited more than her broad frame from her notorious pot-smoking mother, Dora.

Through marriage, children, happiness, and the blues, these strong, funny women gather each Sunday at the same table at Earl’s diner for delicious food, juicy gossip, occasional tears, and uproarious banter.

With wit and love, style and sublime talent, Edward Kelsey Moore brings together four intertwined love stories, three devoted allies, and two sprightly earthbound spirits in a big-hearted debut novel that embraces the lives of people you will never forget. (from Goodreads)

My Review

I absolutely loved this book! I had heard a little about it-all good things- and decided I had to read it. The story begins with three middle age friend-Odette, Clarice, and BarbaraJean, along with their husbands, meeting at Earls for their weekly lunch after church services. We are brought right into their lives, and taken back in time to the beginnings of their friendship-and marriages.

I blew through this book much too fast-I wanted it to go on much longer!! The writing was wonderful- thoughtful and funny- and I felt like I really got to know and love these women and their men.I couldn’t pick a favorite part, but one that I really liked was when, at 16 years old, Clarice and Odette go pick up Barbara Jean for a fun Saturday night out, only to find her long absent (abusive) stepfather has returned. When he tries to tell them the Barbara Jean will be staying with him (all creepy things implied), Clarice gets scared by his menacing and turns to leave, but not Odette-she stood up to him and insisted that Barbara Jean was leaving with them. When he grabs Barbara Jean’s arm and twists it, Odette has had enough.

“A few feet away from Clarice, Odette stopped, yanked the wig from her head, and tossed it to her. ….’Clarice, unzip me.’

When Clarice didn’t say or do anything as Odette had told her, she said it again. ‘Unzip me. I spent too much time making this dress to get this asshole’s blood all over it.’

She fixed her eyes on Vondell and said ‘ You’re right about me. I am the girl born in a tree. And you’re right about my father. He’s not a cop. But he was the 1947 welterweight Golden Glove champion. And from the time I was a little girl my boxer daddy has been teaching me how to deal with dumb-ass men who want me to be afraid. So let me thank you now, while you are still conscious, for giving me the opportunity to demonstrate some of the special shit my daddy taught me to use on occasions like this.

‘Now Clarice, unzip me so I can take care of this big bag of stink and ignorance, once and for all.’

You will have to read it to find out what happens-

I strongly recommend this book- and would love to hear how you like it!

rating 4.5 out of 5

About the Author

Edward Kelsey Moore is a professional cellist and author from Chicago. During his high school years, and onward into college, Edward Kelsey Moore experimented with writing short stories. As he finished his education he set writing aside and focused on building a career in music. Many years later, as a member of a string quartet, Edward was hired to perform at a reception for the winners of a local writing contest. As he played background music Edward considered: “I could have sent in a story…” It was an inspiring event and within a few weeks Edward Kelsey Moore began writing again. His short fiction has been published in many literary magazines including: Indiana Review, African American Review, and Inkwell. His short story Grandma and the Elusive Fifth Crucifix was selected as an audience favorite from the Stories on Stage series produced by WBEZ in Chicago. It was broadcast locally, and over National Public Radio. The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is Edward Kelsey Moore’s debut novel

http://www.edwardkelseymoore.com/

Life After Life

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Posted on April 22, 2013

Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson

published by Little, Brown, and Co.

2013

Summary

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant — this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best, playing with time and history, telling a story that is breathtaking for both its audacity and its endless satisfaction. (from Goodreads)

My Review

“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

I heard so much about this book, that I was very excited to read it. While I thought the writing was terrific, in the end, I did not love the story. Ursula lives many lives. The first time she is born, the doctor is not there due to a bad snowstorm and she dies when the umbilical chord is wrapped around her neck. In the next chapter, the doctor arrives in time.The baby survives. “She observed the turn of seasons for the first time. She was born with winter already in her bones, but then came the sharp promise of spring, the fattening of the buds, the indolent heat of summer, the mould and mushroom of autumn.” She survives a few years, until she drown in the ocean with her sister Pamela. In the following chapter, a gentleman, who happens to be on the beach painting, saves their lives. Thie is the flow of the book, how small chances and choices affect our entire lives. Ursula is then possessed with a sixth sense for danger- a sort of deja vu.

I enjoyed reading the book very much, but had a feeling of frustration for Ursula. I wanted her to be happy, and never sensed she was. This sense of sadness struck me-“She had had affairs over the years … but she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and it was only when she realized that it was too late, that it could never be, that she understood what it was that she had lost. Pamela’s life would go on after she was dead, her descendants spreading through the world like the waters of a delta, but when Ursula died she would simply end. A stream that ran dry.”

I would recommend reading this book. It was a first rate example of what historical fiction should be. The writing was really wonderful, and many people loved the story.

Rating- 3.5 out of 5

The Orchardist

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Posted on April 17, 2013

The Orchardist

by Amanda Coplin

published by Harper Collins

2012

Summary

“You belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.”

At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, a solitary orchardist named Talmadge carefully tends the grove of fruit trees he has cultivated for nearly half a century. A gentle, solitary man, he finds solace and purpose in the sweetness of the apples, apricots, and plums he grows, and in the quiet, beating heart of the land-the valley of yellow grass bordering a deep canyon that has been his home since he was nine years old. Everything he is and has known is tied to this patch of earth. It is where his widowed mother is buried, taken by illness when he was just thirteen, and where his only companion, his beloved teenaged sister Elsbeth, mysteriously disappeared. It is where the horse wranglers-native men, mostly Nez Perce-pass through each spring with their wild herds, setting up camp in the flowering meadows between the trees.

One day, while in town to sell his fruit at the market, two girls, barefoot and dirty, steal some apples. Later, they appear on his homestead, cautious yet curious about the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, Jane and her sister Della take up on Talmadage’s land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Yet just as the girls begin to trust him, brutal men with guns arrive in the orchard, and the shattering tragedy that follows sets Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect them, putting himself between the girls and the world, but to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.

Writing with breathtaking precision and empathy, Amanda Coplin has crafted an astonishing debut novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in. Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, she weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune, bound by their search to discover the place they belong. At once intimate and epic, evocative and atmospheric, filled with haunting characters both vivid and true to life, and told in a distinctive narrative voice, The Orchardist marks the beginning of a stellar literary career. (from Goodreads)

“And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Meddey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death.”
― Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist

My Review

This book was wonderful! Once I started reading it, I was completely drawn into the world of William Talmadge, who finds safety and peace in his solitary existence. He tends his orchard alone, with vey little social interaction. He is a simple and very honorable man, and when he finds two pregnant girls hiding in his orchard, he takes them in. Shelter is a big theme in this book , for Talmadge as well as the girls, Jane and Della. The author takes you slowly through her story, especially the beginning. Descriptions of the orchard, of Talmadge’s solitude, and the unraveling of the ordeal the two girls lived through, were mesmerizing. The story grows in intensity and consequences as it progresses. The beginning of the story was especially compelling and I loved the author’s poetic descriptions of the wild, early 20th century Pacific Northwest, as well as the historic details of the period. I would definitely recommend this book- let me know how you liked it!

Rating

4- out of 5

Moon Over Edisto

3 Comments

Posted on April 5, 2013

Moon Over Edisto

by Beth Webb Hart

published by Thomas Nelson

20113

Edisto Island was where it all came apart. Can the Bennett girls ever be whole again?

Once, they were the happiest family under the sun, crabbing and fishing and painting on beautiful Edisto Island in South Carolina’s lowcountry.

Then everything went wrong, and twenty years later the Bennett family is still in pieces. Mary Ellen still struggles to understand why her picture-perfect marriage came apart. Daughter Meg keeps a death grip on her own family, controlling her relationships at a distance. And eldest daughter, Julia, left it all behind years ago, forging a whole new life as an artist and academic in Manhattan. She’s engaged to an art dealer and has no intentions of returning to Edisto. Ever.

Then an emergency forces Julia back to Edisto to care for her three young half-siblings. She grudgingly agrees to stay a week. But there’s something about Edisto that changes people. Can Julia and her fractured family somehow manage to come together again under that low-hanging Edisto moon?

“A rich, endearing, can’t-stop-reading book about what matters most, the power of love to transform the human heart.” –Dorothea Benton Frank, “New York Times “best-selling author, “Porch Lights”

(from Goodreads)

My Review

First, let me say I LOVE reading books about the South, especially South Carolina. I have family that live right outside of Charleston, and I have been visiting there almost yearly for most of my life. When I read a book set in Charleston, I get an extra thrill, because I know those streets, store, restaurants, etc. I also know the outlying islands, including Edisto. The author does a great job bringing the area to life. The story, of betrayal and forgiveness, works very well in the southern setting.

Julia’s best friend Marney broke up her parents’ marriage in their senior year of college. Almost twenty years later, Julia is enjoying s successful career in art and teaching, and has just gotten engaged. Marney shows up at her door. Now a widow and the mother to Julia’s three half siblings, she has lung cancer. She needs surgery, and there is no one to care for the children during her recovery. She asks Julia to return to Edisto to help her.

The story is told from the points of view of different characters- Julia, her mom MaryEllen, her sister Meg, Jed-doctor and neighbor, and Etta, her nine year old half sister.The characters develop quickly and I became immersed in each of their stories, especially MaryEllen. She is still hurt by the collapse of her marriage and confused as to why both her daughters keep her at a distance.

I thought this was well written and moved quickly.

I received a copy of this book as part of a random give away through Goodreads.

Rating 3.5 out of 5