TLDR: an old woman travels out of country after her husband dies, meets a bunch of people, befriends a 10 year old boy who drowns, she travels again to meet his family without telling anyone in her family, she meets the boy's sister, and then somehow her previously drug-addicted daughter randomly...
I devoured this book! I love the crisp, deceptively simple style of writing Vendela Vida uses. This story, of a woman recently widowed, returning to the place of her honeymoon in Turkey, is sad, moody and very moving. It is, to me, a story of trying to move forward but having to get pulled back t...
I ended this book with rather mixed feelings. I'll say up front that of course I didn't want to like it, or, specifically, I didn't want to like Vida's writing, because I hate her self-aggrandizing, egotistical, greasy-headed special snowflake douchebag of a husband, and therefore by close associ...
I’ve mentioned once or thrice that where I work we have constant book donations coming in, and before we add them to our collection I get to peruse them and take what I want to read. It’s a fringe benefit that has saved me hundreds of dollars. Anyways, the other day a box of books showed up on ...
This is the second leg of your trip from Miami to Casablanca, and the distance traveled already has muted the horror of the last two months. What’s to stop you from having a conversation with this man, possibly even ordering two vodka tonics with the little lemon wedges that the flight attendant ...
I had many friends willing to gaze upon, and suggest improvements to, this novel in its early and inelegant forms: Ann Cummins, Nancy Johnson, Andrew Leland, Lisa Michaels, Cornelia Nixon, Ron Nyren, Ann Packer, Ed Park, Angela Pneuman, Michelle Quint, Sarah Stone, Ayelet Waldman, Amanda Eyre War...