The Drop by Dennis Lehane

This is the second Dennis Lehane book I've read; I first became interested in him when Mystic River came out and he did a radio interview in which he talked about his experiences working in the child welfare system.

But everyone's a grown-up in this book.  I really did enjoy it, although I found the violence surprising and somewhat unsettling, as I did when I read A Drink Before the War (although not as much).

But for all its grit, this novel has a great happy ending payoff that includes a dog.  What more could you ask for?  Good writing, deft characterization, suspense, happy ending and a dog!

This is an easy, quick read.  I think it took me three to four hours.  It has something for everyone: suspense, a heist, a mystery, a romance and a dog!  Oh, and it starts over Christmas!  If you like suspense in an urban setting, and you don't mind a happy ending, I would definitely recommend this novel.  

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

I've just begun this Pulitzer Prize-wining nonfiction account of Memorial Hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

It's already easy to see that the health professionals inside the hospital went from feeling confident about their ability to ride out the storm to being frightened and stressed by the heat and other factors due to the loss of electricity for several days.

It seems that there are some obvious policy recommendations.  Hospital generators need to be reliable for at least four days rather than hours.  Hospitals need to designate on-site decision makers, and need to prepare them for making major administrative decisions if they are not hospital administrators.  Perhaps hospital administrators should be required to remain on-site during hurricanes and other storms than can remove electricity, and should be required to try to get to the hospital if the electricity goes out.

White Princess by Philippa Gregory

I read this title for a book group, and I didn't expect to like it since I know quite a bit already about Tudor history and thought I would not enjoy a fictionalized account, especially one with elements of the supernatural.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised.  I found the story interesting.  As some reviewer of The White Queen said, Gregory makes The War of the Roses/Tudor history interesting despite the fact that we know how it ends.

I was a little disconcerted by the point of view of Elizabeth of York:  her view of Richard III as a tragically lost lover and her view of Perkin Warbeck, which really surprised me (she views Perkin Warbeck as being, possibly, her brother Richard, the Duke of York (presumed lost/murdered in the Tower of London).  For one thing, I had not thought that there was any uncertainty about whether Richard, Duke of York had perished in the Tower.  I do remember reading somewhere, with some incredulity, that there is some thought that Richard III had an illegitimate son who succeeded in escaping notice.

Gregory's characterization of Margaret of Beaufort as an old battle ax may not be far off the mark although it does not quite answer the question I've always had, which is, how did Margaret Beaufort think that she could put her son on the throne given that the Beauforts were expressly excluded from the succession by an act of parliament.  Perhaps the answer is simply "that was then, this is now."

Her portrait of Henry VII as a man obsessed with keeping his crown perhaps explains the "bloody" nature of the Tudors.

I was a little disappointed by the ending, which seemed to me to trail off without conclusion.  However, it occurred to me that no ending is perhaps needed when you know that another chapter in the saga will appear in a year's time.

Given that this story is the basis for Games of Thrones and many other books, I perhaps should not be so surprised that Gregory has been able to mine it for much more drama.

Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause by Mignon Ballard

Just finished this novel.  I liked it.  It's not necessarily the sort of thing I would be most interested in reading given my own inclinations (I read it for a book group), but I think it's very well done.   It's a historical mystery.

The year is 1943, and Miss Dimple is a middle-aged (oh, well, perhaps a little bit past) first-grade teacher in a small town in Alabama.  She has taught first-grade, and lived in Phoebe Chadwick's boarding house, for decades.

The children are given time off of school to pick cotton because so many of the men who worked as farm laborers are in the military.  Miss Dimple and the other teachers go along to supervise.  At the end of the day, a horrible event occurs.  As a teacher goes to a creekside to retrive some wandering children, she glimpses a skelton which has been exposed by receding flood waters.

Miss Dimple is haunted by a feeling that things are not quite right.  And many folks in this close-knit town are in some kind of distress:  Buddy Oglesby is trying to recover from another job loss and find his place in the world; Charlie Carr, her sister Delia, and her best friend Annie are all troubled by their beaus' absence as they serve in the military; Phoebe Chadwick seems to be being blackmailed; and there's something "not quite right" about the new football coach.

All is revealed, but not before a bond rally and local pageant is held, and not before at least one lovelorn lass gets engaged, and not before there is a second death and a shooting.  And not before a whole lot of visiting and going to dinner at each other's houses, and much baking and gifting of said baking.

That's a lot of action for one little town.

Although Miss Dimple is probably not familiar with the term, she is a feminist.  Although has no children of her own, she loves her students.  She is a member of a close community, knows everyone, and participates in all the community's events.

Some of the strains of small town life are present and some are absent.

But the portrait of a community's response to the war effort, the home front, from collecting grease to ration stamps and margarine and going without butter, all feel pretty accurate.

        "Dimple Kilpatrick seldom worried.  It did no good to dwell on conditions one could not      change, but if there was something she could do to improve a situation, she believed in doing what her father had referred to as "stepping up to the plate."

      When the other teachers left for school af ter the midday meal that day, Miss Dimle gathered up her leather handbag decorated with colorful yarn flowers, along with her umbrella, just in case she spied litter along the way, and left them in Phoebe's front parlor.  According to the porcelain clock on the mantel, she had more than enough time to get back to school before the first bell rang.

     And then she made her way down the long hallway, knocked on Phoebe Chadwick's bedroom door, and "stepped up to the plate."

This book is part of a series.  The first title is Miss Dimple Disappears, the second is Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause, the third is Miss Dimple Suspects, and the last is Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

I'm reading The Heist, and it's my first Janet Evanovich novel.  I've been told that the novels that she write in collaboration with others are not as good as those in the series "starring" Stephanie Plum.  Of course, I haven't read any of those so I can't make any comparison.

I can say that The Heist, like the Rosie Project, feels like "reading" a movie.  So many of the ideas are very cinematic, from decked out yachts to massive explosions caused by rocket launchers.

I found myself wondering if Goldberg came up with the plot, the setting, the pacing and Evanovich came up with the jokes.  I wonder because the jokes tend to be very woman-centric.  Even so, some of them just don't feel quite right, like the one in which the protagonist, Kate O'Hara, lists wearing a push-up bra to her sister's wedding as a deception about which she feels guilty.  I thought and thought about that one; it definitely did not immediately ring true that wearing a garment of clothing, no matter which garment of clothing, could be thought of as a deception,  Maybe Lee Goldberg wrote that joke.

I read this book for a book group and some of the Evanovich fans present said that they preferred the Plum series.

I find myself wondering about books written by screenwriters.  To me, one of the virtues of this book is its quick pace.  I didn't feel that I had to wade through a lot of exposition to get to the action.  In fact, the episode of the exploding yacht takes place in the first half of the book (which surprised me).
On the other hand, Kate and Nick or whatever their names are, are stock characters.  I do feel like I'm reading an episode of "The Mentalist," or "White Collar," or  any one of a number of other shows that feature sexy con men teaming up with strait-laced FBI agents, whether male or female.

This book is entertaining:  funny and fast-paced and a lot like TV.  It's hard to care about the characters, because they aren't very well-developed (although Kate's ex-military dad is an interesting and entertaining character, and his ability to help her in her work is exciting).  It seems to me that this is a great book to read on a plane, a train, a bus or when you're sick - i,e., when you want to be entertained and you don't want to work so hard.

Enough Said by Nicole Holofcener

This is a romantic comedy (kind of) starring James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.

It's a very novelistic kind of film, in that it seems to me to be less a genre film (romantic comedy), than a consideration of "how we live now."

James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss meet at a party and start dating.  At the same party, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss meets a very elegant woman (Catherine Keener) who, it turns out, is a published poet.  Dreyfuss is a massage therapist and Keener soons becomes her client; after a while, they also become friends.

Louis-Dreyfuss is excited about dating Gandolfini, and optimistic about where their relationship might lead.

One day, Dreyfuss makes the startling realization that Keener is Gandolfini's ex-wife, and that her new boyfriend is the same person that Keener has been roundly and bitterly criticizing (sometimes about petty things) every time that she and Keener have met.

Holofcener is a filmmaker who makes films that are not entirely conventional (nor are they entirely unconventional).  She does not seem to feel the need to divert us at every moment and make each step of the plot conform to our expectations.  As beautiful as both Louis-Dreyfuss and Keener are, she allows both actresses to do ugly things.

I enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it with the understanding that it is not The Proposal, that is, not a highly conventional romantic comedy.  There are two things I like very much about it.  One is that its portrait of women is a little more well-rounded than that in many films.  The other is that this in film, she allows all of her actors, Gandolfini, Louis-Dreyfuss and Keener, to play roles that are not exactly their type.  It's especially refreshing to see Gandolfini in a gentler role, one a little more like my favorite performance of his in the Christian Slater-Rosanna Arquette romantic comedy, True Romance.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I read this for my book group, as a companion to Orphan Train. After I'd read about 100 pages, I found that I felt really good.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it was the book's emphasis on cultivating flowers and cooking as nurturing activities that enrich both the performer and the recipient.  Perhaps it was the "magic" element:  in this novel, the protagonist has a special gift and is able to choose the flowers for her customers that solve their problems.  First, it's a man who misses the sunny disposition his wife used to have; then it's a young woman who has been disappointed in love many times.

Victoria is a ward of the state, having been given up by her mother shortly after her birth.  The novel opens on her 18th birthday, her last birthday "in care," when her social worker comes to take her to special housing where she can live rent-free for three months.

Victoria is an angry person, and she's unmotivated to find the job she needs and a real place to live. But she is passionate about working with plants.  She spends the three months she is supposed to use to find a job stealing plants from gardens and using them to create her own garden in a city park.

When she's kicked out, she goes to sleep in her garden.  When her slumber is disturbed by amorous lovers one night, she realizes she needs a real home, perhaps a room somewhere.  So she looks, for the first time, for a job and approaches a local florist.  The florist won't hire her, but offers her $5 to load her truck.

The florist, Renata, tells her that it's a busy season for her, creating bouquets and centerpieces for weddings. Renata offers to hire Victoria part-time, and her brilliant career as a floral designer/magic maker begins.

Soon she meets a young man in the flower market who intrigues her.  As they begin, very slowly, to court using the "language of flowers" we follow her in flashback to her childhood placement with a foster parent, Elizabeth, who owned a vineyard and taught her about the language of flowers.

I was a little surprised that not everyone in my book group liked this book.  One person said that she found that it dragged a little in the middle (authors, trust your editors!).  I wouldn't have noticed because when I read it I was: struggling to get it read on time; just grateful that it was an easy read; and I was reading it on an electronic device and having techinical problems which kept interrupting the flow of the narrative.  Curse you, imperfect technology!  This was Diffenbaugh's debut novel, and since it's become a book club favorite, I think it has to be termed a success.

I was under the impression that she has written a second novel, but I must be mistaken because I can't find any reference to it on the Internet.  I did learn that Diffenbaugh and her husband foster children, adopted a child, and that she has formed a not-for-profit called The Camellia Network to help foster care children who age out of the system.

Now having read the end of the novel, I think this book emphasizes celebrating our strengths and part of its feel-good quality is its embrace of  self-acceptance. Victoria keenly feels that lack of nurture (sometimes also the lack of food) in her childhood, but almost from the beginning of the novel she is nurturing others by selecting flowers for them.

One other thing:  When I was in Mod Brit Lit long ago, I enjoyed reading Sons and Lovers.  When I got to class, I was pretty shocked.  "Did I read the wrong novel?", I asked myself, because I could not understand the professor's remarks or my fellow student's responses.  During our book group discussion, I was surprised by some participants' comments about not being able to understand the motivation of the characters at critical points in both novels.  In fact, the author explains why the characters make the decisions that they do.

I conclude (not originally) that we read what we want; we ignore that which doesn't interest us or of which we disapprove.  There are probably a whole bunch of things that we ignore, all the time.  I can't help wondering, however, if we would enjoy literature more if we made a greater attempt to be open to it.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani

I love this book.  It has a lot of virtues:  it offers pithy rules for social media marketing; it's brief and concise; well-written, so easy to read; and while it is aimed at beginners, I think some of its points are useful for everyone to remember.

First of all, it answers the most basic question:  why Social Media Marketing?  Because a) that is where the people are, b) trust in advertising continues to erode and c), people are already talking about you (don't you want to be part of that conversation?).

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ p age will appear with search results.  There are also 30 pages of case studies, mostly smaller businesses, and how they used these principles to grow their businesses.

One of the themes of the book is that, while you utilize an effective publicity strategy on social media, you need to also stick to the knitting:  make sure that your product is top-notch.  It's high quality and high value that is, in some cases, the key to success.

For instance, in Kabani's discussion of Groupon, Living Social, and other group buying sites, she points out that if you create a coupon to attract new customers, be sure to have a plan in place that includes high-quality service performance and customer service.  Encourage your coupon customers to follow up on social media with comments about your product or service.  BUT - be sure that the experience that your prospective customer has when they use a coupon is likely to merit a good review.  If you think that staff are not ready for the highest levels of scrutiny, it might be wise to review some important customer service principles.  To make the most of the opportunity afforded by the group buying coupon, a business leader must prepare to staff to cross-sell or upsell, without being too aggressive.

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ page will appear with search results.

I think that blogs, especially when they're part of your website (as she recommends), have the potential to be very useful to libraries.  That's because, as this book points out, providing information that is useful to your patrons (in the case of a library), your consumers (people who read your content on social media and hopefully, are positively influenced by it), and finally your customers (people who actually consume your products and services), is key to social media success.

One way I would love to take advantage of social media is to use it to help answer the reader's question, "What do I read next?" whether that's a question about which book is next in a series, what's hot right now, or what's a strong recommendation for a good book to read.

She recommends blogs in particular because a) they are a better forum for conveying expertise than Twitter; b) you can ask your followers to subscribe to your blog, something that you cannot do with a website.  However, you can use a blog to drive traffic to your website by inserting links to your website in your blogs (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google+).

She is very specific about how often a blog author needs to post to create a new audience for a blog:  twice a week.  I guess "Content is king," but fresh content is even kinglier.  Establishing a relationship with a consumer of your content is easier if you communicate more frequently.

However, as a online marketing textbook I recently read asserted, the nature of Google's algorithms determining ranking are such that, ultimately, high quality content may be more important that the strategic insertion of keywords in metatags.

Another theme is the "engagement" aspect of social media marketing.  The old fashioned model for mass communication was broadcasting:  one message sent to many people.  Kabani points out that many ineffective social media marketers "abuse" social media by continuing to push out a message
that that may or may not be tailored to sub-audiences and which does not engage the visitor.  Further, she repeated points out that while you cannot talk back to a TV, you can talk back on social media and that is its great strength.  A social media marketer should be starting, and continuing, a conversation rather a one-sided communication.

In Chapter 4, she offers some "social media marketing tenets."  They are:

1.  Respect other people online.

2.  Efforts to control and manipulate will backfire.

3.  Don't chase everything new under the sun.

4.  Traffic is nice but should not be the only goal of social media marketing.

5.  It's a good idea to use your real name.

6.  You have to be proactive (reach out to others; start a conversation).

She quotes marketing expert Nancy Marmolejo's advice to social media marketers:  "to position yourself as an expert in your field .. you must market yourself as a highly visible, ideally matched source of for your audience. .. Always focus on providing valuable content, boosting your credibility, building trust, .. Value, credibility and trust.  Add those three things to a high level of visibility and you have the social media recipe for success."  (Implied in her remarks are the value of credibility, which should be part of any public relations effort.  The way to build credibility is to be open, honest, and deliver what you promise.)

Social Media Policy

There was a time when a lot of libraries were concerned with this issue.  I assume that most libraries that want to have a social media policy now have one.

Shama Kabani makes several interesting points about crafting a social media policy.  One is that one size does not fit all, and it would be ideal for a social media policy fit your organization.  Another is that it is not necessary to make social media rules punitive or draconian.  She emphasizes commen sense, and points out that at Zappos, employees are encouraged to participate in social media and are trusted to present the company in a positive light.  She points out that as of the writing of her book, Zappos has not had any problems with social media comments posted by colleagues.  This reminds me that again, having a healthy company culture can do wonders in preventing these kinds of problems.

I think something that's implied is that when and if you adopt a social media policy, you spend some time talking with staff about their role in social media.

Some More Pithy Rules

"If content is king, video is the king of the bigger country."

"Many executives between the ages of 45 and 65 are digital aliens.  They were not brought up in the digital age and feel overwhelmed and sometimes fearful of the new technologies."

"You might have heard the saying around SEO blogs and discussion boards that "Content is King," which is true.  But optimizing that content is how to ensure your site performs better than your competitors'."  (Chapter 3, "Search Engine Optimization," p. 30.)

(Her definition of social media:)  "Online platforms where people connect and communicate." (Chapter 4, p.48.)

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time; I've read 150 pages and I've decided to throw in the towel.  I just compared notes with a friend about how many books on a list of banned books we'd read:  she'd read 30, and I'd read only 9 and two halves.

And too busy.  After I'd gotten to the 150 page mark, I was actually very interested in finishing.  But life intervened, and I was very busy for the next week.

This is a book about a married woman with children, and the protagonist of the novel is both a happy person and a person who inner consciousness we're allowed to share.  Cecilia is constantly making observations about her husband and her children that I think will be very familiar to other mothers. She, too, is nearly run off her feet and doesn't have much opportunity, I don't think, to think very deeply about what it is that she's doing and how she feels about things and herself.

I recently chatted with a co-worker who had just finished the book and learned that by the end of the book, a lot has happened, a lot has changed, and Cecilia has had opportunity enough to have a lot to think about.

The book is well-plotted, suspenseful, and very importantly, relatable.  It is an entertaining book.

This book has proved to be SO popular.  People are still taking about it.

I see that new editions of her earlier books have been published.  Those are The Hypnotist's Love Story, What Alice Forgot, Three Wishes, and Last Anniversary.  Her latest book is Big Little Lies, which has also been a bestseller.

Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol

Josephine is a harried Parisian housewife.  She has a job working as a researcher at a French agency, and while it doesn't pay well it's a lifesaver because her husband, Antoine, has lost his job as a hunting guide. Antoine is demoralized his job search.  After he's been unemployed for a year, she discovers he's having an affair and kicks him out.

Shortly after, her sister comes to her with a proposition:  write a novel about the 12th century and she, the sister, will do the promotional tour and pass off the work as her own.  The book becomes a big success, in part because Iris, the sister, is so good at promoting herself.  Her promotional tour is a bit of a spoof of celebrity culture.

I can see why this book has been a bestseller in Europe; it's very entertaining.  I don't think that there's any way in which it's less accessible to American readers than European except that the place names and character names are unfamiliar.  Lots of familiar celebrities make an appearance:  some children have an "Imagine" game that involves singing John Lennon's song "Imagine"; Diana, Princess of Wales, is referred to several times.  I think I recall that French celebrities are mentioned once or twice but not more than English-language ones - I think Meryl Streep, playing Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa is also mentioned.

The story is a wish fulfillment story; middle-aged woman is left by her man (although she invites him to leave when she discovers that he is having an affair) and, gradually, starts to find ways to cope with his absence and to rebuild her life.  She starts going to the hairdresser, losing some weight and getting herself a new man.

She also has a teenage daughter that speaks to her in a really cruel way; her mother is also rather critical.

Globalization is explicitly touched on just a few times:  one character bemoans the seeming inability of some companies to "change with the times"; another company survives by purchasing a Chinese company; and of course, the whole plot is set in motion by the protagonist's husband leaving her and that really happens because he loses his job.  He spends a year looking for a job and he begins an affair with a local hairdresser.
Frankly, although this novel is supposed to be a novel about female empowerment, it's possible to make an argument that if the lead character not kicked out her husband in a fit of fury she wouldn't have had such great success but she'd still be married and her children would be happier.

I think this novel was published in France in 2006, so it's not new.

Ratlines by Stuart Neville

I feel very enthusiastic about this book.  I think I chose to read it because I wondered if it was the sort of things that would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.

I think it would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.  There's less emphasis here on military operations but plenty of action and adventure and most of the men in the story are ex-military.

I enjoyed it more because there was more of a backstory, not just for the protagonist (an agent with military intelligence), but for the villains.

The first chapter definitely reminded me of The Eye of the Needle, especially the way that you're just plunged into the story.  Although it's a dark story, it's interesting.  I certainly felt inspired to go on.

I wasn't familiar with the term "ratlines" which means the escape routes Nazis took to places like Ireland and Argentina.  Of course, ex-Nazis also came to the U.S.  Interesting, a new novel has just been published, called Warburg in Rome, which is about the Catholic Church's involvement in "ratlines."  There was also a film about an ex-Nazi in flight, The Statement, from 2003, which starred Michael Caine.

There's a bit of Irish history here, especially about Ireland's complicated neutrality during the Second World War.  Ireland's then government viewed neutrality as necessary, but the personal history of the protagonist demonstrates how complicated Ireland's position was.

My Irish history is spotty but at the start of the Second World War, the Irish Republic was less than two decades old.  Ireland had struggled for centuries to achieve independence, and could easily have been invaded by Britain.  How Britain felt about Ireland in 1939, I don't know.  But I do know that in the 16th and 17th centuries, Britain feared attack through Ireland.

Yet many Irish men fought for the British, as did Albert Ryan, this novel's protagonist, an ex-military man bored by civilian life and now working for the Directorate of Irish intelligence.  Shosrtly before John F. Kennedy, the Irish-American president, is to visit Ireland in August, 1963.  His boss farms him out to Charles Haughey; Haughey's goal is to hush up the problem as much as possible.  He knows that publicity about the sanctuary Ireland has given ex-Nazis will sour the good feelings produced by the president's visit.

Ryan is troubled by his mission, which is to get down to the bottom of a series of murders of ex-Nazis who've found refuge in Ireland.  He feels that finding the killers is nearly the same thing as protecting Otto Skorzeny and the other ex-Nazis in the novel.

The second half of the book is full of double-cross and even triple-cross, with plenty of action and suspense. I was surprised by the book's ending.  There are at least two scenes of torture.  I tend to ignore these kinds of things when I come across them in books, and I imagine that others do, too, but I felt my recommendation had to include that notice.

Neville provides a bibliography of some of the sources he used in researching his novel:

Fugitive Ireland:  European Minority Nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, 1937-2008, by Daniel Leach.  Four Courts Press.

Commando Extraordinary:  Otto Skorzeny, by Charles Foley, Cassell Military Classics.

Rescuing Mussolini:  Gran Sasso 1943, by Robert Forcyzyk, Osprey Publishing.

Haughey's Millions:  Charlie's Money Trail, by Colm Keena, Gill & Macmillan.

JFK in Ireland:  Four Days that Changed a President, by Ryan Tubridy, Collins.

News from a New Republic:  Ireland in the 1950s, by Tom Garvin, Gill & Macmillan.

Neville states that Cathal O'Shannon's documentary Ireland's Nazis "first planted the seeds of this story" in his mind.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I've just finished this novel, and I have so many contradictory and perhaps "sharp" or critical (as in finding fault) things to say about this book - which I basically enjoyed and would recommend.

The first thing I have to say is that I am sad.  I probably didn't cry as much as some readers, but I imagine that was because I was in a public place about 75% of the time I was reading the book.  I would guess that not crying did not help me to be less sad.  There were certain sentences in the book that immediately made me want to cry.

I found myself feeling uncomfortable with the unbearable pain of losing a young person to cancer being transformed into an entertainment.  Eventually, I realized that I had my own experience with this phenomenon, and perhaps my critical attitude had to do in part with how much I minded having my faded pain unearthed and freshened.

There is something weird about how we respond to the death of young people.  I noticed it when I was in high school and the president of the senior class killed himself.  Someone said, breathlessly, "I sat at his lunch table," as if physical proximity to someone who died not that long after was in some way significant.  I think I thought at the time that there was something callous and insincere about this reaction and perhaps it was only that it was wonder and stupefaction rather than real grief.  Death is so other; so strange and unlike our other experiences.

The book begins with an odd disclaimer.  Green reminds the reader that the book is a work of fiction and that too much and nothing literal/real/thinly veiled should be read into it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago:  This book is a work of fiction.  I made it up.  

  Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story.  Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.  

  I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

After the book concludes, there is a acknowledgemwnt of many people that includes the family of Esther Earl, the young woman to whom the book is dedicated, and who has presumably died of cancer.

As you can see from the very fact I mentioned this, I really did not "get it."  To me, it's patently obvious that readers may be passionately interested in the facts that lie inside a story and that academic criticism holds that those increase our understanding and appreciation of the story.  This is the first book I've read by John Green and I find myself wondering if all of his books are written in this style, which I see as a highly entertaining mashup of low colloquialisms and high diction.  I usually love that kind of stuff, and it's a very big part of why I enjoyed this book and why I recommend it.  But the whole thing about the author's note makes me nervous.

The flavor of the novel first appears in the second paragraph:

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

The book goes in for a lot of criticism of the empty comfort that is offered to cancer patients (the support group leader who soberly intones, "We are literally in the heart of Jesus," while that cannot be true).  And there is a great deal of discussion of the search for meaning for dying people who do not believe in heaven or are not sure that they believe in heaven.

Hazel is a sixteen year-old cancer patient; at her mother's insistence, she very reluctantly attends a cancer support group meeting.  While there, she meets someone new, a young man who has had "a touch" of osteocarcinoma.
She is intrigued by him, and he is also very impressed by her.  They grow close in painful and sometimes absurd circumstances.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

I like Fannie Flagg.  She's fun.  I enjoyed her book Redbird Christmas, although I think that this book has much more to offer.  Flagg is also the author of Fried Green Tomatoes and the Whistlestop Cafe (if I've got the title right), which, like this novel, affirms women's strength and relationships.

I really enjoyed The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion.  The things I liked about it were the fact that some complex issues were presented intelligently, although it was overall an optimistic, upbeat, life-affirming novel.  I also think that most readers will find it a light read, and one that is not too challenging.

It was also very much a book about women.  The protagonist, Sookie, has to find herself after her identity is shattered, as she sees it, when she learns that she is adopted.  It's also a book about women's achievement, which is shown as being very important.  (It is important, but I secretly wish that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is very important, too.)

When the novel opens, Sookie has just married off her last daughter.  She's mentally breathing a sign of relief as she considers what she'll be able to do with her free time - including reading!  Her time isn't entirely her own, however, as she spends a good bit of time looking after her octogenarian mother.  Her mother is a bit of a handful.  That's putting it tactfully.  Her mother is demanding, interfering, embarrassing, and arguably a bit batty.

In the wake of a lawsuit against her mother for something like libel, Sookie has taken over paying her bills and handling her correspondence. That leads to the event that drives the plot.  ( I feel guilty about telling you too much.

In the second paragraph above, I said that I wished that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, too.  I think that's part of what is so lovely about this novel.  I didn't realized until I'd thought about it some more, but Flagg is saying that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, and that all women's work is important and should not be devalued because it includes laundry!