Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Summary and review:

The Scarborough women have been cursed for generations--at the age of 18 they become pregnant and, after giving birth (always to a baby girl), they go mad. The curse will end only when a Scarborough woman can complete three impossible tasks before the birth of her daughter. Lucy is the next Scarborough in line for the curse, but with the help of her boyfriend, her foster parents, and clues passed down to her from her mother, she is determined to successfully complete the tasks and escape the fate of the Scarborough women who have come before her. The tasks are outlined in a version of the folk song "Scarborough Fair" that Lucy's ancestors have sung for generations--make a magical shirt without needles or seams, find an acre of land between salt water and the sea strand, and plow an acre with goat's horn before sowing it with a single grain of corn.

I loved the way that Nancy Werlin used the song "Scarborough Fair." It's such a brilliant idea. The song is perfect; despite its familiarity, its beautiful tune is haunting and the meaning of the lyrics cryptic. The idea that something so common can hold so much mystery and hidden meaning is exciting. It gives a magical, mystical possibility to everyday life.

I also really liked the relationships in the book. It's so easy in young adult fiction to manufacture plot lines by giving the teen antagonist backstabbing best friends, unfaithful significant others, and unsympathetic, distant, or totalitarian parents (who are usually divorced and fighting, adding additional angst to the storyline). Not every relationship in the book was healthy--Lucy's mom, for example, was a deranged bag lady. However, Lucy had a strong support system in the form of her boyfriend, her best friend, and the Markowitzes, the foster parents who reared Lucy since birth. Anyone of these people could have easily let Lucy down, considering that she was a pregnant teenager with some pretty crazy-sounding ideas about how she ended up that way, yet they didn't. It was refreshing to see Lucy's loved ones stand by her.

I wish that the villain had been a little more menacing. The truth about the punishment he imposes on the Scarborough women is absolutely evil and creepy and horrifying, but with regards to Lucy completing the tasks, he didn't seem to pose much of an obstacle. I think Werlin definitely could have upped the tension in that respect.

Overall, I thought that this was a captivating book, especially at the beginning. The momentum died down a bit towards the book's conclusion, but I loved the premise and the characters. This is the second book I've read by Nancy Werlin, and I will definitely be adding more of hers to my library's hold list. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: Minor

Sex: References to abortion, pregnancy, and teenage sex, and rape. Although Lucy refuses to consider abortion and mentions that she is alive only because her mother refused it, abortion is offered by several different people as a viable option to end an unwanted pregnancy. Furthermore, teenage sex is seen as something inevitable and normal. This may be offensive to some people, so please take that into consideration.

Language: Mild

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hutter Epstein

Summary and review:

As the subtitle to Randi Hutter Epstein's book suggests, Get Me Out follows the science and superstition of childbirth from the earliest recorded births to the fertility industry of today. But Get Me Out does more than just deliver birth-related anecdotes; Epstein uses historical attitudes toward conception, pregnancy, and delivery to comment on contemporary society. From feminism to industrialization to urbanization, Epstein argues that the way humans view childbirth is a reflection of the morals, values, and beliefs that we espouse in general. It is a fascinating read and moves quickly, throwing out examples from various historical ages. In particular, Epstein traces the "medicalization" of childbirth. Pregnancy, which began as a spiritual journey on which a woman was accompanied by instincts and fellow women became, in the 20th Century, a medical condition that necessitated professional treatment as would a life-threatening disease.

Epstein's attitude toward non-medical births is interesting. As a medical doctor (she received her M.D. from Yale University), I expected her to be aggressively pro-hospitals, pro-obstetrics, and anti-midwives and homebirths. She is firmly against "freebirthers," women who give birth at home without any medical intervention, shunning both doctors and midwives (her tone in the "Freebirthers" chapter is actually rather sarcastic and mocking. It's clear she finds the movement not only ridiculous but irresponsible). Yet Epstein seems surprisingly open to midwives and non-hospital births. She seems to regret the loss of the sisterhood that supported a woman before, during and after labor. Many of the anecdotes Epstein includes reflect negatively on medical professionals: doctors who unfairly painted midwives as incompetent and dangerous; men who had never stepped foot into a birthing room yet published medical tracts contradicting midwives' knowledge; horrifically painful medical experiments performed on unanesthetized slave women; epidemics of puerperal fever, spread by unwashed medical equipment and doctors' hands; and DES, a synthetic estrogen prescribed for everything from morning sickness to miscarriage prevention, which had horrific consequences for the children of DES mothers, and yet was prescribed by doctors even after it was shown to cause reproductive cancers and malformations in animal trials.

Initially I was slightly turned off by Epstein's writing style. As I mentioned, she has a medical degree from Yale, but she also has a masters degree in journalism from Columbia. However, her writing in places seemed unprofessional, even flippant. For example, in the introduction Epstein writes about the superstitions regarding cauls, pieces of the anmiotic sac that sometimes stick to a baby's head. She writes of a Roman emperor whose son was born with a caul, a fortuitious sign. "As predicted," she writes, "the boy joined his father as a co-emperor by age 9, but father and son were murdered the following year. Whatever" (ix).

Seriously? She has Ivy-league degrees in medicine and journalism, but that sentence sounds like it was written by an eighth-grade girl. Through text messaging. A few other instances like this in the beginning of the book made me wary, as if Epstein were trying too hard to sound cool, or to make a boring subject (how could childbirth and pregnancy be boring to a postpartum woman?) sound cool. Fortunately, things improved. I actually ended up liking Epstein's writing style. It felt like I was listening to an interesting lecture given by a well-spoken professor.

Other interesting stories in the book included the Chamberlens, male "midwives" who invented a type of obstetric forceps, "Twilight Sleep," a cocktail of narcotics given to women to make them forget the pain of childbirth (it was becoming increasingly popular in the early 20th century, but fell out of favor after its champion died during childbirth after having taken the drug), the use of X-Rays during pregnancy and the possible dangers of ultrasounds, and the ins and outs of the sperm bank industry.

Again, I thought this book was fascinating. The way Epstein presents the history makes it relevant to more than just women with children. Anyone interested in sociology or medical history will enjoy Get Me Out. ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: Little, but the descriptions of surgeries may be disturbing to some people.

Sex: Nothing too racy, but it is kind of the crux of the book. There is also mention of pornography as used in the sperm banks.

Language: Mild

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Summary and review:

Wintergirls begins as Lia learns that Cassie, her former-best friend, is dead. Cassie died alone in a cheap motel room during a cold New Hampshire winter's night, after having left 33 messages on Lia's phone. Lia refused to pick up the phone when Cassie called; Lia also encouraged Cassie's bulimia by making a pact with Cassie to be "skinniest" when the girls were in eighth grade. And now Lia is haunted by Cassie's ghost.

Wintergirls seems like an attempt at poetic prose--different sizes of fonts, repetition, crossed-out phrases, even pages left entirely blank. I sometimes found the style irritating and distracting, but at other times I felt that it captured the confusion, compulsion, and disjointedness Lia suffered because of her disease. One of the most commonly used stylistic devices was crossed-out text, but I'm not actually sure what that meant. Sometimes it seemed like the struckthrough phrases were Lia's attempt at sarcasm, other times they seemed like the conscious censoring of her thoughts to conform with what she feels is acceptable to others, and then there were times when it seemed like the very opposite, as if Lia were rebelling against what she was supposed to feel in order to express her version of reality.

Lia, I would imagine, was a difficult character to write. Typically in order to receive positive reviews, a book needs a sympathetic main character. Lia...isn't really. It is extremely frustrating to watch Lia do things that are so destructive and appear so irrational, especially when she seems to know better at times. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. Anorexia (officially, "Anorexia Nervosa") is, from what I understand, a compulsive disorder, meaning that those who suffer from it are driven to act in a way that is irrational and destructive. Like Lia, those who suffer from anorexia may know that they harming themselves but their disease leads them to continue on the same course regardless.

I don't feel that I gained any insights to the causes of anorexia--rich, upper-middle class white girls with difficult family lives who feel pressured by their parents and want control over their lives. Not much new there. There were places in which Lia's way of thinking was eye opening, however. The way that food conjured up opposing feelings of desire and disgust and the ever-receding target weight were interesting. I was actually worried at times that it was too explicit; some of Lia's methods for hiding her weight loss and disguising her refusal to eat seemed a bit too educational.

I was really conflicted by this book. While the topic is obviously important, I don't know enough about the disease to say whether or not Wintergirls really captured the essence of anorexia. It was definitely not pleasant to read; if terrifying and disturbing were what Anderson was going for, than it was spot on. ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: The description of Cassie's death are disturbing, and Lia is a cutter as well as suffering from anorexia.

Sex: N/A

Language: Not extreme, but the F-word is used (just once, I believe) and other curse words are scattered throughout.

The Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin

Summary and review:

David Bernard Yaffe is embarking on a second attempt at finishing his senior year. His first senior year was stalled when he was accused of killing his girlfriend, Emily. Although he has recently been acquitted, the memory of Emily's death and the sensationalism of the trial are too fresh in the minds of David's Baltimore community, so he moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to live with his uncle's family and finish school. Cambridge, however, is not free from complications. David's Uncle Vic and Vic's wife Julia aren't speaking to each other; there is something seriously wrong with Lily, their 11-year-old daughter, who resents David's intrusion into her life and embarks on a campaign to drive him out; On top of it all, David is staying in the attic apartment which, until four years previously, was occupied by Kathy, Vic and Julia's eldest daughter. Kathy is dead, but she still haunts the Shaughnessy family.

David is the book's narrator; the story follows him as he tries to manage the guilt he feels over his role in Emily's death, but, as the book's title seems to imply and as David's prologue states, the story is about Lily. Lily is haunted by her sister's death, and deals with her emotions by attempting to manipulate and control those around her. David's arrival throws her world into disarray, but it may also give her the chance to finally come to grips with what happened that day.

I was surprised by how creeped out I was at times while reading The Killer's Cousin. It's a thoughtful, well-written book that explores grief, forgiveness, family, and guilt, but it's also extremely suspenseful, and exhibits characteristics of thrillers and supernatural-type books. Lily in particular is creepy. If I were David, knowing that Lily was lurking around my apartment would be much more disturbing than anything else that could be hanging around.

I felt that the big mystery which was revealed towards the conclusion of the book was kind of obvious, however, I don't really have a problem with that. In many ways, anticipating the horror David would feel upon discovering the truth actually increased the suspense I felt while reading.

Although The Killer's Cousin deals with some extremely weighty topics and is a very sad book overall, it ends on a hopeful, redemptive note. The ending was satisfying, giving the characters a fresh start, and left me feeling positive. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and Gore: No graphic descriptions are given, but the book explores the deaths of two young women.

Sex: Again, no descriptions are given, but sex is mentioned multiple times in relation to several characters.

Language: The language is mild throughout the entire book, and then all of a sudden the F-word, used in a sexual context, is thrown in.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Summary and review:

Jacob Rappaport is the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant in New York. In 1861, at the age of 19, he joins the Union army in order to escape the marriage his parents have planned for him--to the mentally disabled daughter of his father's colleague. He quickly settles into life as a soldier, pleased with his anonymity; however, one night he is called into the tent of a visiting general. Expecting a promotion, Jacob is puzzled when the general begins quizzing him on his background. Soon Jacob finds himself on an undercover mission. A Confederate spy in New Orleans is planning to assassinate President Lincoln, and Jacob's mission is to poison the man before he can harm the Union leader. The mission will be carried out on Passover, and the target is Jacob's own uncle. And the army has other plans for their Jewish secret service agent. Upon his return to Washington, Jacob is given another assignment. The daughter of Phillip Levy, one of Jacob's father's associates, is a suspected Confederate spy. The object of Jacob's mission is to marry the girl.

I was so incredibly disappointed with this book. So disappointed. I was thrilled when I first read the synopsis on the book jacket. Jewish espionage during the Civil War? How did I not know about this before? The premise had so much potential. But the book really did not go anywhere. First of all, there was so much needless repetition, of both small details and larger thematic elements. And these repetitions are not subtle, they are often word for word--twice we read about Jacob "mourning" the disappearance of an attractive girl's body part after she had covered up some skin that was provocatively visible, and "errant curls" must have escaped from their owners' carelessly coiffed hair at least a half-dozen times. And there were so many unlikely coincidences that occurred. Jacob meeting Abigail, who looked just like Jeannie and was in love with a soldier who looked just like Jacob, for example. And don't you think someone would have flagged Jacob's name after his first attempt at espionage in the South? It was just too improbable. I didn't buy it and it bothered me to read it.

I was also irritated by the constant corny sexual innuendos. This book always seemed like it was on the verge of becoming a corset buster. While it never crossed that line, there were so many cheesy lines that I actually found myself groaning out loud a few times. I'm sorry, but getting turned on over someone threading a needle? That's just a little too much imagination, in my opinion.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of this book, however, was Jacob. I can't think of the last time I read a book with such a weak, sapless main character. Other than running away to join the Union army, Jacob did not once act of his own volition. Every step he took was forced upon him by another person. And even signing up for the army was something Jacob did only as a last resort, after he was forced into it by the prospect of an arranged marriage. Jacob is constantly having misgivings about what he is doing, but he does it anyway, every single time. Pretty major spoiler coming up right here, but if Jacob was so in love with Jeannie, why didn't he do anything about it? Why did it take two years and the combined efforts of his father and hers to get him finally track him down? I honestly just wanted to shake him, "wake up man and do something!" To be fair, I think that what the author was going for was a discussion on choosing between competing impulses: love and honor, self and society, justice and emotion. However, the debate never fully played out, because the only choice Jacob consciously made was to not act. The rest of the time he was just swept along in the machinations of characters who actually had backbone.

At the conclusion of the novel, Dara Horn includes a fairly lengthy author's note, in which she discusses her motivation for writing All Other Nights as well as the historical sources for her novel's characters and plots. The information contained here is really interesting--she lists off a number of Civil War spies and also gives some background on Judah P. Benjamin, a major player in both Horn's novel and in the actual Civil War. Reading this, I came to a realization about the plot of All Other Nights, which at first seemed like nothing more than a messy, soupy mix of random detail and far-fetched characterization: there are simply too many incredible stories to tell. The historical details Dara Horn mentions in her author's note are fascinating, even though they're only the barest outlines of the stories. In trying to pull them all together, the spy who could dislocate her jaw at will, the slave in General Longstreet's camp who relayed messages through laundry, and the riding crop used to transport messages, Dara Horn tries to do too much. It feels like she was so enamored by the many stories she came across in her research, that she forced them into the novel, and they therefore sit awkwardly with the reader. With this reader, at least. ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (3/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: although little of the action takes place on the battle field, it is a Civil War book and so, as is to be expected, you'll read about quite a few amputations, bloody head wounds, and so forth.

Sex: More cheesy than explicit, however the reader is still privy to way too many of Jacob's fantasies, in my opinion.

Language: "Minor" curse words and blasphemy.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Summary and review:

Midwives is told from the perspective of Connie Danforth, a thirty-year-old woman. When Connie was fourteen, her mother, Sybil Danforth, was a midwife in rural Vermont. That March, Sybil was called to assist at the bedside of a laboring woman. During the labor, it appeared that the mother had died of a stroke and so, in order to save the baby, Sybil performed an emergency c-section on the woman with a kitchen knife. Sybil saved the infant, but the next day faced questioning from state police and was later arrested in the death of the mother. The book follows the Danforth family through the summer and into the fall of Sybil's trial.

My husband saw me reading this book and said, "Huh. Midwives. Sounds boring," and I have to say, this is not a book that your average male is going to feel comfortable reading. There is far too much talk of female anatomy for that. I am actually rather surprised that the author is a man. Maybe that's sexist of me but, it really is a compliment. I thought the predominately female characters were very believable, and I'd imagine it could be difficult for a man to write like that. And anyway, as the novel makes clear, the birthing room has historically been the woman's domain.

My reaction toward this book was kind of unusual. While I found myself being more and more drawn in to the life of Sybil Danforth and the outcome of the trial--I even had to stop a couple of times to remind myself that it was fiction--there were places when I was kind of bored. I had a hard time with the courtroom scenes in particular. Not to sound too cliche, but the posturing of the attorneys really irritated me, and all stereotypes about lawyers aside, I don't think Bohjalian meant for it to be that way. I really can't figure out how the book managed to be both compelling and tedious at the same time. There were a couple of spots during the courtroom chapters where I was tempted to skim ahead to read the verdict, much like I would have done if reading about an actual trial in a newspaper. I am glad I didn't; the end (like seriously, the very end) of the book was so, so good. I actually gasped when I read the last page, and it's been replaying in my head over and over again ever since.

I do have to take issue with the people who keep comparing this book to To Kill a Mockingbird. (Interestingly enough, on his website, Chris Bohjalian lists Atticus Finch as his favorite fictional hero). Okay, Midwives does feature a courtroom drama, and the narrator is a young girl (I'm going to sound prudish here but whatever, she was WAY too mature for my taste. Or not mature, depending on how you classify premarital sex, underage drinking, and drug abuse), but that does not make it To Kill a Mockingbird. This book is good, but not that good.

One thing that I really liked about the novel was that I finished reading and still didn't know know how the author, Chris Bohjalian, felt about the home births vs. hospital births (in this interview, Bohjalian says that although his daughter was born in a hospital, he and his wife would not hesitate to have a child at home). I had a baby less than a year ago, so I've heard a lot from both sides about the debate, and one thing that is not lacking in the argument is fiery opinions from both sides. Before I began to read, I expected to encounter a lot of propaganda from one side or the other, but fortunately the book was free of that. ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: Two words: emergency cesarean. There is some major home birth carnage going on here. Those of you with weak stomachs might want to steer clear of some of this.

Sex: besides the obvious (if there weren't any, Sybil Danforth would have been out of a job), there is some teenage experimentation and various parts of the female anatomy are discussed, but there isn't anything gratuitous.

Language: Mild

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

Summary and review:

For years, Milo Weaver was "a tourist"--a black ops agent for the CIA. His handler, the only man he trusted, was God, and, like the most fervent believer, Milo carried out orders without hesitation or question, no matter what was required. He had no name, no home, no family, and no past. Eventually, however, the life of tourism begins to take its toll. By 2001 Milo is hooked on amphetamines and weary of the endless cycle of new orders, foreign cities, and dead bodies, and he attempts suicide during a mission. The attempt fails, and immediately Milo is given another assignment, which he accepts with a weariness and resignation born of exhaustion mingled with long years of unquestioning obedience. This next mission, however, gives Milo the resolve to do what he has long been unable to do--retire. In Venice, with a near-fatal gunshot wound leaking blood from his chest, gripping the hand of a laboring pregnant woman, with the broken form of a young girl on the cobblestones beside him and the body of a former-colleague-turned-traitor a few yards away, Milo makes the decision to leave the world of tourism.

2007 finds Milo living in Brooklyn, with a name and a permanent address. He is no longer a field agent, having traded in his former life for a desk job, a wife, and a daughter. He is happy in his new life, but is brought back into the field when one of his closest friends is implicated in a plot against the United States. By accepting the new assignment, Milo descends back into the world of black-ops CIA. This time, however, Milo is a different type of tourist; no longer willing to work on blind obedience, Milo uncovers previously unseen elements of lies, manipulation and betrayal in his old cases and soon finds himself on the run.

I really enjoyed this novel. It reminded me a little bit of The Bourne Identity (the movie; I've yet to read the books)--extremely suspenseful with tons of twists. There were multiple times when I thought that Milo (and I) had figured out who the "bad guy" was, only to find out that there was someone else holding the strings. And The Tourist wasn't just some shoot-em-up James Bond-type story where the protagonist sleeps with the girl and shoots a bunch of people and asks questions later. Milo Weaver was a government-hired assassin with a conscience. It was really interesting to imagine the psychological ramifications that a "career" like this could have on a person, and I'm glad Steinhauer included passages where Milo struggled with what he left behind him in the wake of an assignment.

My biggest complaint about the book was the way Steinhauer used September 11 to bookend Milo's story. Milo's Venice assignment, the one that resulted in his retirement from Tourism, happened on September 11, 2001, and the book ended six years later on September 11, 2007. I couldn't figure out why Steinhauer decided to use this date, and it really bugged me. There were a few asides about the way the CIA changed after 9/11, and Milo complained a few times about post-9/11 airport security, but having the action take place on September 11 didn't further the plot in any way that I could see. I kind of think Steinhauer, who, as an American living in Hungary publishing novels with an American publisher, has probably enduring more than his share of post-9/11 flights, was annoyed with the airport security himself and thought it would be clever to title the Venice section "The End of Tourism."

Regardless, that's a pretty minor complaint. The book ends with a gigantic cliffhanger, so I suspect that we'll be seeing more of Milo Weaver, and I'm looking forward to it. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: There are a lot of people getting shot, poisoned, thrown off balconies, and stabbed with HIV-infected shards of metal in this book. Be warned.

Sex: There are no sexual encounters described in this book. There are, however, two references to sexual abuse of children. While absolutely no details or descriptions are given, it is still a pretty disturbing.

Language: Bad. In addition to the usual suspects, the f-word is also used quite a few times.