January/February Book

We have chosen I Still Dream About You, by Fannie Flagg, as our January/February book. Discussion will begin on February 25. Happy reading!

January/February Book Choices

We had tremendous discussion about our last book. Thanks for all of your comments.

Here are our choices for the next book discussion: 29: A Novel, by Adena Halpern; I Still Dream About You, by Fannie Flagg; Raising Jake, by Charlie Carillo; and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simpson.

Please cast your vote by Wednesday, January 18, by emailing me at kzmclain@comcast.net.

Good Daughters is a good read

The Good Daughters caught me from the very beginning and never let me go. I liked almost everything about this book.

I had never read anything by the author, in fact, had never heard of her. I approached the book with some trepidation as a result. As it turns out, I absolutely love her writing style.

I thought the characters were (for the most part anyway) realistic. There were good guys and bad guys, but not in the black hat/white hat way of some books. The characterizations seemed genuine. For example, the character that I liked the least, really disliked in fact, was Dana’s father. However, he wasn’t abusive in the strictest sense of the word. He didn’t sexually abuse her, nor did he physically abuse either of the children. Yet, he was so immature and unavailable that I wanted to strangle him. And really, Val wasn’t much better, though I found her to be less disturbing.

On the other side of the coin, I really liked Edwin. Despite the fact that he had cheated on his wife (who appears to be somewhat frigid), he was just so very kind to his daughter. I felt like he really went out of his way to be kind to Ruth, perhaps because he observed that her so-called mother was so distant to her.

Which character did you like best and who did you like least?

I said that I liked almost everything about the book. There were some things that I thought weren’t particularly realistic. For example, I felt that it was too predictable that Dana loved farming and Ruth was artistic. Having said this, however, I have to say that I never suspected the truth about the girls’ father until Ruth’s Connie came and took her away upon learning that she was pregnant with Ray’s child. Ah ha, I said. Perhaps I shouldn’t ever decide to be a detective. At what point did you suspect the truth?

I also am curious as to your opinions on whether or not Connie ever knew that Val had an affair (or at least a one-night stand) with Edwin. She knew that Val was Ruth’s mother, but did she know that Edwin was Ruth’s father? I guess I think she did, and suspect that is part of why she had so much interest in Val as well as Dana.

I also was somewhat disconcerted by the fact that Connie apparently just went along with Edwin when he suggested that they not make a big deal about the switching of the babies. Really? That didn’t seem terribly realistic to me.

Overall, I thought this was one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I would rate it an 8 out of 10. I will definitely read something else by this author.

As an aside, I was so interested in her that I looked her up on Wikipedia. I learned that she lived with J.D. Salinger for some time starting when she was about 18 years old. Interesting.