"You have no idea how much you can get used to". ―Benjamin Stout, The Slave Dancer, P. 24 One just gets a feeling about certain books. Even before reading them, it's as if one can already sense the magnitude of the story, can tell that the reading experience about to be had is so big and imp...
This was a very interesting book. When I first loooked at the title I had very little interest in it, but yuo know what they say, "You can never judge a book by its cover." When I opened the book up to read the summary I was very surprised. It was very different than I thought it would be. An ele...
What a life! I was enthralled, following the details of Fox’s life, as she was moved about from person to person, city to city, even living in Cuba for a year and a half. Fox is 91 years old, and the book takes place up to the point that she is 21 years old, except for a short section at the end,...
A village of tiny shell houses made by Emma and her friend Bertie is destroyed. Is it Emma's aunt Bea--suspect because of her strange, childlike behavior? Emma returns home from her stay with aunt Bea, understanding more about her relative's erratic, forgivable ways.
After her father's death, thirteen-year-old Victoria and her mother struggle to regain a sense of order and security.
My Take on It: This was not a book for me. Surprisingly- I generally am a big fan of realistic fiction that focuses on personal growth and emotional development. However, this book had an ethereal, wispy quality to it that just didn’t fit the subject material for me. I have not read any of Fo...
This is the second book I’ve read by Paula Fox, the first was Slave Dancer. She is very good at writing characters. I swear I’ve met Mrs. Scallop before—she’s a close acquaintance!“It was the time he’d been happy and hadn’t known it. When he was happy now, he would remind himself he was. He wou...
Eleven-year-old Lily and her brother, living on a Greek island, find their relationship changes when they meet another American boy.
Suspended above the buildings, in which people lived and worked was a luminous yellow glow as if the city was a banked fire. Above that was the huge black sky that covered everything. The neon signs of closed stores cast out fishing lines of light onto the shadowed street. In restaurants, he glim...
THE BEAR One Saturday morning, a few weeks after Patsy had left, Maurice awoke at six o’clock. His window was blurred because it was raining so hard. The hamster stirred in its cage. “You’re up too early,” Maurice said. The robin lifted one wing slowly and opened its good eye. Maurice went into t...
John’s River in East Jacksonville, Florida. On weekday mornings, I walked through a small woods of scrubby pine trees to a narrow blacktop road where I was picked up by a bus and, along with other children, driven to the local public school. When I returned home, I was met...