"A History of the Present Illness" by Lousie Aronson~ Stories

SUMMARY :

A History of the Present Illness takes readers into overlooked lives in the neighborhoods, hospitals, and nursing homes of San Francisco, offering a deeply humane and incisive portrait of health and illness in American today. An elderly Chinese immigrant sacrifices his demented wife's well-being to his son's authority. A busy Latina physician's eldest daughter's need for more attention has disastrous consequences. A young veteran's injuries become a metaphor for the rest of his life. A gay doctor learns very different lessons about family from his life and his work, and a psychiatrist who advocates for the underserved may herself be crazy. Together, these honest and compassionate stories introduce a striking new literary voice and provide a view of what it means to be a doctor and a patient unlike anything we've read before.

In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese, Aronson's writing is based on personal experience and addresses topics of current social relevance. Masterfully told, A History of the Present Illness explores the role of stories in medicine and creates a world pulsating with life, speaking truths about what makes us human.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :
Published by:  Bloomsbury
Pages:  272
Genre:  Fiction/Short Stories
Purchase the book by pre-order here:  Barnes and Noble  or Amazon


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Louise Aronson has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MD from Harvard. She has received the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award, and three Pushcart nominations. Her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and the Literary Review, among other publications. She is an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

Louise Aronson's stories are sharp and brilliantly cut like a laser to the heart of the matter.  And that matter is often how present care givers, families and patients feel about their options to live and/or receive medical care or not in this complicated and uncertain world.

These powerfully written vignettes bring to light the perspectives of human beings caught up in medical situations of the seemingly ordinary, the complex, the traumatic and the long-term.  I felt I was seeing some truths about physicians for the first time.  And, I felt the complexities that families
often face in determining care issues for their elderly and "feeble" (for lack of a better word) family members well stated and carved out here.

All in all an outstanding book of short stories with a wealth of humanity, knowledge and warning.

Highly recommended as well for its ease of reading and its ability to mesmerize.  I frankly loved this book's ability to make me care about the doctors and the patients on a visceral level.  Further, I loved the mix of cultural differences in handling the illnesses and aftermaths.


5 stars           Deborah/TheBookishDame

"Blood Wounds" by Susan Beth Pfeffer ~YA Family Dynamics

Overview :  Blood can both wound and heal . . . Willa is lucky: She has a loving blended family that gets along. Not all families are so fortunate. But when a bloody crime takes place hundreds of miles away, it has an explosive effect on Willa’s peaceful life. The estranged father she hardly remembers has murdered his new wife and children, and is headed east toward Willa and her mother. Under police protection, Willa discovers that her mother has harbored secrets that are threatening to boil over. Has everything Willa believed about herself been a lie? But as Willa sets out to untangle the mysteries of her past, she also keeps her own secret—one that has the potential to tear apart all she holds dear.

Particulars of the Book :

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication date: 9/4/2012

Pages: 256

Author:  Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre:  YA fiction/general

About the Author :

SUSAN BETH PFEFFER is the author of many books for teens, including Life As We Knew It, The Dead and The Gone, and the bestselling novel The Year Without Michael. She lives in Middletown, New York.

www.susanbethpfeffer.blogspot.com

The Dame's Review:

I'm a fan of Susan Beth Pfeffer's.  I absolutely loved her "Life As We Knew It" post apocalyptic series in the YA genre.  She has a fine eye for the YA crowd, and her books fit easily into the "cross over" fiction that I love to tell my readers about.  "Blood Wounds" is another of these books that YAs and adults will like reading.

Pferrer hits your interest from the beginning chapters as we learn about Willa and her juxtaposition of a dialog that tells us how special/loving her family is, versus the conflicting storyline that shows a family that allows her to be left alone and to forge her own way through a horror show of a personal crisis.  As a reader, I was swept up in this book's ability to keep me "fooled" with the conflicting stories...even to the point of wondering if the author knew what she was doing!  It was genius!  I loved how she brought the whole thing to a head in the later parts.  It's a wonderful ploy and one I don't want to destroy more by giving away here.

The characters in this novel are interesting and well worth investing in throughout.  I found Willa to be a particularly well-rounded and absorbing one.  However, the other characters are less developed than I'd like them to have been.  Her lost half-brother, in particular, was an engaging figure, but only developed in a shallow manner.  And, I thought her mother, though we learn a good deal about her, could have had more depth; as well as her step-father.  Adjunct characters such as a best friend of her mothers is rich and most enjoyable to read in the story.

The plot having to do with Willa's bloody biological father, her own "cutting" that mimicked his psychological bent in a minute way, and the dysfunctional family dynamics she finds herself in makes the book captivating.  This is a book I couldn't read fast enough to suit myself.

All in all, Susan Beth Pfeffer wrote another novel I can recommend to readers of all ages.  There's meat here psychologically for everyone.  The story is fraught with warnings about settling for less than we should as individuals and family members.  There is also good wisdom and advice about the psychological manifestation of "cutting."  The writing style is enjoyable.

4 stars                        Deborah/TheBookishDame

"The Gilly Salt Sisters" by Tiffany Baker~Cape Cod Salt Marsh "Witches" Live?

Opening lines: "It was the season again for fire in Prospect, a time of cold and ice but also an occasion for rising heat and smoke.  A moment for salt and prophesy, when the future met the past and the old ceded to the new, for better or for worse."

Storytelling in a New England saga- -Cape Cod, salt marshes, mud-thick property, wet and slick from harsh winter storms and treacherous ice.  This is the stuff of a small town's mysterious workings; witchery, superstition, relics of old, a faceless Madonna and traces of history repeating itself. 

Summary :

The author of the New York Times bestselling The Little Giant of Aberdeen County returns with a magic-tinged tale of dreams, family secrets, and betrayals on a New England salt farm.

In the isolated Cape Cod village of Prospect, the Gilly sisters are as different as can be. Jo, a fierce and quiet loner, is devoted to the mysteries of her family's salt farm, while Claire is popular, pretty, and yearns to flee the salt at any cost. But the Gilly land hides a dark legacy that proves impossible to escape. Although the community half-suspects the Gilly sisters might be witches, it doesn't stop Whit Turner, the town's wealthiest bachelor, from forcing his way into their lives. It's Jo who first steals Whit's heart, but it is Claire—heartbroken over her high school sweetheart—who marries him.

Years later, estranged from her family, Claire finds herself thrust back onto the farm with the last person she would have chosen: her husband's pregnant mistress. Suddenly, alliances change, old loves return, and new battle lines are drawn. What the Gilly sisters learn about each other, the land around them, and the power of the salt, will not only change each of their lives forever, it will also alter Gilly history for good.

 

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Particulars of the Book:

Published by:  Grand Central/Hachette Book Group
Pages:  385
Author:  Tiffany Baker
Author's Website: http://tiffanybaker.com


Book may be purchased on AMAZON at:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Gilly-Salt-Sisters-ebook/dp/B004QX07FK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1335099023&sr=1-1

or through BARNES AND NOBLE at:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-gilly-salt-sisters-tiffany-baker/1103367217?ean=9780446194235

Something About Tiffany Baker :

              Tiffany Baker’s Recipe For A Writing Life

A handful of islands: Belvedere, Aquidneck, Balboa, Manhattan, Corsica, Maui, the UK
Three small children: Two girls and a boy, plump in the cheeks and knees. Strong-willed but sweet when kissed.
One husband
Indecent amounts of chocolate and coffee
A view of a grassy ridge and an old gum tree

Start with the islands. Move from one to another up through your twenties. Add a graduate degree in creative writing from UC Irvine and then a PhD in Victorian literature for extra flavor, plus a smattering of tragic relationships. Move to New York to teach humanities, drink expensive cocktails, and give up on men.
Go hiking on Corsica with your mother. Meet your future husband. Move to England to be with him.
Add the first child to the mix and marinate. Return to the US, to the town where you began. Wonder what you’re doing home again. Gradually, fold in one, additional child until life is thick and hard to stir.
Decide to write a novel. Get pregnant again in the meantime, but refuse to give up writing. Finish the novel and get rejected. Repeat as necessary until the mixture becomes glue-like and unappetizing.
Finally, find the world’s most perfect agent who performs a miracle and sells your novel to the world’s best editor. Revise the novel many times, until it congeals. Do a victory dance.
Begin Book 2, having forgotten how hard writing a book is. Eat obsessive amounts of chocolate and decide what you’re doing isn’t half-bad. Gain an undisclosed amount of weight and take up jogging.
Every day, take a long walk on the grassy ridge. Stop at the gum tree, breathing deeply. Stare across the hill at your house where your children and husband are. Hope your cypress tree isn’t really dying. Hope for enough rain in the coming season. Hope for world peace. Finally, really, really hope people enjoy your book. Hope they like the second one even more.
Bon Vivant!

The Dame's Look At The Gilly Salt Sisters:
The Gilly Salt Sisters takes place in a small New England town similar, if not just, Falmouth...near Woods Hole. Of course the original New England colonies were not only populated by puritans and those pious believers in the straight and narrow path, but they were seasoned by island peoples...slaves from the Caribbean, from Africa and from other exotic places where superstition and "witchcraft," magical and mystical things followed them.  These characteristics were met with the same that underpined some of those who fled England and Scotland, as well.  In Massachusettes, Salem had experienced the witch trials...the areas of Cape Cod and up as far as Gloucester were aware of these things. The people of New England don't easily forget~it's in their blood. Who wouldn't be influenced by the Gilly Salt Sisters?

In this novel (and in actuality, as a matter of fact) the salt's unique properties, historic and mystical to begin with, were given a reverence~they were fraught with healing powers, the power to keep and preserve foods and meats, originally the power to exchange like money, to season cooked foods; and, quite mysteriously to change the well-being of businesses and the over all climates of the town.  Only the Gilly family and specifically the Gilly women were capable of handling the harshness of the salt marsh, harvesting it and controlling the delivery of the salt throughout the town and region.  They were afforded a sort of begruding prominence and fearsomeness in town.  Their ability to throw their own bag of salt into the yearly, autumn bonfire to predict the future of the town in a sort of ancient festival, solidified the superstition and mysticism that surrounded them; that made them weird and outcast.

Within this confine of prejudice and their wild, muddy marsh of a farm life, Jo and Claire Gilly grew up and struggled with their fates along with their single mother.  They are marvelous characters as different as Cain and Able.  Jo the Abel of the two: dark-haired, faithful to the marsh and salt, protective of loved ones, strong and rough around the edges. And, Claire; the Cain, weak in spirit, red-haired and tempermental, selfish, working to tear down the salt and all it represents in the town and to her past. Gloriously well developed characters that stand up in realism.  So real in fact, that you believe they're actual people.

Throughout the book we find abberations in the tale, however, that changes all perceptions.  The men and women involved with the Gillys aren't always what they appear to be and the lives of the Gillys and townspeople overlap in a multitude of ways.  All this causing their histories to intersect for good and for bad.  This is a story rich in family dynamics of love and betrayal, mystery and revelation, mysticism and romance.  The sea and the marshes that hem them in play against the gothic themes an cause the book to take on a dark tone...so like Poe in some instances.

Tiffany Baker knows how and when to pull the strings that deepen our connections with her characters and the momentum surrounding the Gilly Salt Sisters.  The spector of mystery and revelation hangs before us as she builds and hints and drops us through Jo's discoveries.  But even as the other charcters are brought in and layers are developed, we still remain in the dark until the climax of the book.

I love this kind of mystery mixed with a grand and sweeping tale of a family that mysteriously winds its way through a history. A family unwittingly repeating itself until somehow it finally finds a way to break the bond that held it captive.  And through that freshly broken wound restores something of itself through a healing, a new trust, a new love and life of hope.  Even though grief and punishment remain behind. Even though some of the connections are thin and come from wild roots.

The Gilly Salt Sisters is a great book in the order of a sort of Jane Smiley's "Thousand Acres," but I think it's richer and it's dug into more detail.  I loved the book and hope you get a chance to read it very soon! 

5 stars!!

Deborah/TheBookishDame

PS:  You'll never look at salt the same again...I'm now eating only sea salt.

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May The Mail Be Ever In Your Favor! As It Was In Mine This Past 2 Weeks :]

In the last two weeks, the Spring breezes have been in my favor, and my postman has been lugging boxes to my door!

I'm so thrilled and banked with books!! 

This, however, may mean I won't be up for air for a while. :P

Stash One, above....

This is my second haul....so psyched!

Mixtures here of things I've received and ferreted out, and purchased on my own.

I am so happy to have received a wonderful bunch of new ARCs from Bloomsbury:  Can't wait to read these!

The Sweetness of Salt         by Cecilia Galante

Little Women and Me         by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Dead Reckoning                  by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

Something Like Normal    by Trish Doller

Violins of Autumn               by Amy McAulay

The Unquiet                         by Jeannine  Garsee

Ripper        by Amy Carol Reeves     *Been looking forward to reading this one for a long time!

The 500     by Matthew Quirk           *ARC from Regan Arthur ~ Great DC thriller!

The Girl Who Couldn't Say No          *Review request from author psychiatrist Jack V. Hattem

2nd stash:

Roanoke                           by  Margaret Lawrence       *purchased at Library sale

The Devil's Queen                                                           *purchased at Library sale

The Weird Sisters                      *Barnes & Noble buy

Jane Vows Vengence (Austen mash up!)   *Barnes & Noble gift certif. buy

Revived    by  Cat Patrick    *Little, Brown & Co., ARC

The Drowned Cities  by  Paolo Bacigalupi   *Little, Brown & Co., ARC

Alpha    by  Greg Rucka    *Mulholland Books, ARC

Guilt by Degrees  by  Marcia Clark   *Mulholland Books, ARC

Pure    by  Juliana Baggott     *Requested for review! YA

The Innocents      by  Francesca Segal   *ARC for review

Last Will                 by  Lisa Marklund         *Requested for review ~Scandanavian thriller writer!

Fatal Induction     by  Bernadette Pajer     *Poisoned Pen  ARC

I Hunt Killers         by  Barry Lyga               *Review request

While I'm At It:  Netgalley Reads~

The Last Romanov

Love Fiercely

Slide

Sophie and the Rising Sun Enchantments

Replication

Unruly Passions

Dying to Know You

So, now you know all the bookish secrets I'm harboring...or do you?

Deborah/TheBookishDame    (Then again, what's a dame without her secrets? :]  )

"Lone Wolf" Jodi Picoult's Latest Doesn't Howl



Jodi Picoult's novel of family and natural instincts falls short
 only in the abilitiy to have a strong impact throughout. 
The best part was the information
on the wolves.

Published by:  Atria/Simon & Schuster
Pages:  421
See:  http://www.jodipicoult.com/


Summary:

A life hanging in the balance . . . a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family secrets, love, and letting go.

In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature. Humans aren’t so lucky.

Luke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father. Edward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward’s younger sister, Cara.

Suddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father’s fate together. Though there’s no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die . . . or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want? How can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?

Another tour de force by Picoult, Lone Wolf brilliantly describes the nature of a family: the love, protection, and strength it can offer—and the price we might have to pay for those gifts. What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart?

The Dames Review:


Disappointed.  I wanted to love this book.  I tried to find interest in the human struggle, but it failed in light of the naturalist information of Luke Warren and his wolf pack.    What happened after a while was that the book wained and fizzled out.  The question or the moral dilemma regarding what constitutes "life" in brain damage and vegetative states was simply not tackled here in earnest, and that left a gaping hole.  Cara's and Edward's tug of war over "pulling the plug" or not on their father, and who should do it because one was beloved more than the other, acted as the central point of the novel.  I felt it was a book not well thought out.  Something was missing.  Something important was left out that should have anchored the whole. 


I'm a huge Picoult fan who sits on the edge of my chair when I have a new novel of hers in my hands.  I struggled through the beginning of this book because I kept  hoping it would pick up.  I loved the parts about the behaviors of wolves in the wild and how Luke Warren found a way to become a part of them.  What I found watered down, the human family parts of the story, made the book boring and took away from it as a whole.  The family secrets were over rated.


This isn't Jodi Picoult at her best.  I'm sorry I can only rate this book at a C level.  It's a book I'd only recommend to friends and readers as an eBook or paperback option.


3.5 stars howling at the moon in sadness


Deborah/TheBookishDame

 


NOTE:  I apologize for any strangeness you see on my blog at this time.  I'm having problems with my computer!!

"You Are My Only" by Beth Kephart~A Stunning Novel of Mother Love and Loss

Published by:  Egmont USA

Pages:  256

Genre:  Literature & Fiction, YA,

Family Dynamics, Psychological

Book Summary :

Emmy Rane is married at nineteen, a mother by twenty. Trapped in a life with a husband she no longer loves, Baby is her only joy. Then one sunny day in September, Emmy takes a few fateful steps away from her baby and returns to find her missing. All that is left behind is a yellow sock.

Fourteen years later, Sophie, a homeschooled, reclusive teenage girl is forced to move frequently and abruptly from place to place, perpetually running from what her mother calls the "No Good." One afternoon, Sophie breaks the rules, ventures out, and meets Joey and his two aunts. It is this loving family that gives Sophie the courage to look into her past. What she discovers changes her world forever. . . .

Brief Introduction of Author:

Beth Kephart is the author of thirteen books, including the National Book Award finalist A Slant of Sun, Undercover, The Heart Is Not a Size and Dangerous Neighbors. Kephart is a winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, among other honors. You can visit her online at http://www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com/.

The Dame Tells All:

Here's the scoop: This will be the most extraordinary and probably one of the most memorable books you'll read for a long time.  I suggest going right away to buy your hard copy, first edition because you'll want it in your personal library. I predict it will be one of the Top Best Books of 2011.


It is so masterfully written that you could simply close your eyes and point on any given page, and you'll land at a beautiful turn of phrase or description.  This is a book of the heart and soul.  This is a book that only an author of the highest quality could write.


The characters we learn to love:  Emmy Rane, the delicate, damaged young mother whose baby is stolen; Sophie, the baby and teenager whom we come to know and love; Joey, her next door friend and companion-of-the-larger-world;  Autumn, Emmy's precious person who helped; the awe-inspiring Aunts; and the man who made a difference...  All of these people are believable; they come alive in the hands of Beth Kephart.  I know them.  I cried with and for them, and I laughed in joy and sorrow with them.


The structure of this novel is one I have come to favor in every instance:  the back and forth of individuals and their story lines.  In "You Are My Only" we see the story from the perspectives of Emmy and Sophie.  This kept the book running at such a pace that I held back to savour every page.  I was so sad when the book ended.  You know the feeling...didn't want it to end.  But, it ended just perfectly, as I knew it would have to.  The final line was poignant and rang with truth.


This is a novel that can't be shared more than I have without giving too much away.  This is a story that will so touch your heart and mind that you may want to reread it right after you finish it.  I loved the book and recommend it to all of my friends and readers.  It is a novel that will leave you somber, however, and I must tell you that; it's not one that you can expect to do other than make you think and hope.


5+ stars for this very beautiful book by a genius of a writer.


Deborah/TheBookishDame

Teen-aged Girls & Predators~"Dark Song" by Gail Giles

Published by:  Hachette Book Group

Little, Brown and Company

Pages:  320

Genre:  Fiction, YA Fiction

Summary:

Ames Ford has a perfect life--that is, she had a perfect life, until her father is fired and her family has to move from their mansion in Colorado to a slum in Texas. Now her mother won't stop yelling, her father won't stop drinking, and her little sister hides with a pillow over her head to drown out the fighting.

But then Ames meets Marc: Mysterious. Experienced. Rebellious. Gun-obsessed. He loves her more than anything, and he won't let anyone stand in his way where Ames is concerned--especially her parents. And when was the last time they did anything but ignore, dismiss, or hurt her? Ames must now decide just how far she's willing to go for loyalty, for revenge, and for love and if she's willing to commit the ultimate betrayal against her family.
 
Gail Giles, acclaimed author of What Happened to Cass McBride? and Shattering Glass, will have you questioning what you'd do at your breaking point.

The Dame Reviews :

Riveting book!  I thought this might just be a quick read pretty much without consequence...just a good story.  It's not.  It's a book that sits one back in the chair with a serious, cautionary tale.  I think it's a "must read" for parents of teen agers who use social media.

Gail Giles immediately enlists our sympathies for a father who has just been fired, a mother trying her best to cope, and teen aged, Ames, who's basically a "good kid" just trying to cope with private school.  Ames is kind to her little sister, thoughtful of her dad, and trying to understand her often bitchy mother who is controlling and demanding of all the family. 

Giles's command of characterization is sound and strong. These characters leap off the page with realism. They are the typical suburban family we are, or know.  It's a little bit voyeuristic!  Giles nails it on the head, here.

The emotional pitfalls each family member experiences as they adjust to the darker sides of themselves and eachother, are wonderfully sketched.  This is one of my favorite parts of Ms Giles novel.  It's honest and shines a light where we like to keep the shutters closed.  I like this kind of honesty and no sugar-coating in my authors.  Again,  insightful.  What we learn about human nature through the vehicle of these characters is tremendous.  "You're not the only one who feels this way" storytelling is always a good sign!

Mostly, I want to recommend this book in the strongest way possible for its stand on the dangers of predators who are lurking on social sites, hoping to entrap young children and young adults.  It's such an important issue, and I want to thank Ms Giles for taking up the story and writing this book for YA's and parents.

Without saying more that would give her story away, I want to also tell you that I loved her moral warning, as well, to parents that being honest and forthright with children is always the best route to take. Lying to protect them, doesn't protect them.  Lies always cause trouble.

Young adults will love the story, and parents will, too.

5 stars for an enlightening and needful book

Deborah/TheBookishDame

Off Broadway, Off Bestseller List~Often Best Book Gems! "My God, What Have We Done?" by Susan V. Weiss

Published by:  Fomite Press, Burlington, VT

Pages:  479

Courtesy of:  TLC Book Tours

Book Summary:

In a world afflicted with war, toxicity, and hunger, does what we do in our private lives really matter?

Fifty years after the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, newlyweds Pauline and Clifford visit that once-secret city on their honeymoon, compelled by Pauline’s fascination with Oppenheimer, the soulful scientist. The two stories emerging from this visit reverberate back and forth between the loneliness of a new mother at home in Boston and the isolation of an entire community dedicated to the development of the bomb. While Pauline struggles with unforeseen challenges of family life, Oppenheimer and his crew reckon with forces beyond all imagining.

Finally the years of frantic research on the bomb culminate in a stunning test explosion that echoes a rupture in the couple’s marriage. Against the backdrop of a civilization that’s out of control, Pauline begins to understand the complex, potentially explosive physics of personal relationships.

At once funny and dead serious, My God, What Have We Done? sifts through the ruins left by the bomb in search of a more worthy human achievement.

About the Author:

Susan Weiss is a writer and a teacher who lives in Burlington, Vermont. Her stories have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies. In addition to teaching adult literacy and expository and creative writing, she has initiated community-outreach writing projects for offenders, refugees, and homeless people.

Visit Susan at her website, susanvweiss.com.  And, for more information visit:  http://gallery.pleasantstreetweb.com/ for a live interview of Susan and a reading from the novel; as well as, reviews from other authors.

Now~The Dame's Review:

My entry title here expresses the Ayn Rand-based theory I have that not all of the best authors and books make it to the "Matinee'" of the Bestseller's List.  As Ms Rand tells us by way of "The Fountainhead," it's often the CRITICS (the "they's" whoever they are) who determine what that list means...who gets on it, which books are best, which authors are fabulous and approved, which art works are genius; well, you know exactly what I mean.  We all saw President Obama get the Peace Prize, didn't we?  :]

In the case of "My God, What Have We Done?" we've left this extraordinarily telling book and its author off the list of new voices in literature!  That is to say, some have; but I'm not going to. 

This is an odd-duck of a book, an unlikely storyline that makes one shake her head at first glance.  Let's face it, it's one of those books that may not engage anyone but the connoisseur of strange books.  It's one that begs the question, why not just two books on either subject?  Ha!  But there are those of us who are the scrappers and connoisseurs of excellent books not discovered by the ordinary readers.  Does this make us book snobs? Hmmm

This is one of those gems all bookish scavengers hope to find when they go hunting on Sundays at old and new bookstores.  This is the kind of book you ferret out at the old "Book Nook" on Main Street that's had hand-selected books for the past 92 years...chosen by Miss Alice who is still so bright she can make a grown man cringe for lack of knowledge of a book past or present!   This is The Book you gratefully take away with you to your reading retreat because she recommended it.  I think some of you understand what I'm saying.

Let me talk about the book as it pertained to me as an example of my generation post-WWII: 

I was born in 1950, just a whisper after the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  What I recall of my early days is not hearing at all about the Japanese and their sufferings, but about the fears of the hydrogen bomb and who might have it and who might use it...against us...and how we need to be prepared for survival. 

I certainly recall the clothing of that age, as described in this delicious, historically-painted book.  I can see the hat that Oppie (Dr. Oppenheimer) wore so clearly in my mind's eye.  Ms Weiss brings me back to my childhood with her descriptions of the scientists in their white shirts and skinny ties, the military brass, fat Sears catalogs, women's fashions and early uses of condoms(I had no idea it wasn't for birth control!).  Her descriptions of the glories of the desert in New Mexico, and Los Alamos in particular, create a sadness in me for those who loved it like Oppie and his brother.  Certainly what they did was a blasphemy to him, and forever marred it's beauty. 

I recall at the age of 8 yrs. old spending play time in my little friend's family bomb shelter because it was filled with toys, food and bunk beds.  When she asked me if my family had one, I said I didn't know what it was.  And, when she told me, I was still confused at first. What was the bomb? How could we live in a world our parents thought might kill us? Why didn't we have our own bomb shelter?  We didn't have one, so that meant we were going to die.  Simple deduction for an 8 yr. old, especially one living in FL in the 1950's.

When I was 13 years old, my military father told me if war was declared he would shoot each of us and then himself so we wouldn't have to suffer through it.  What?  We were living in Germany at the time.  He said we would make a run for the mountains, but if we couldn't get there, he would have to kill all of us to keep us from suffering, so he was going to shoot us in the head. He just wanted me to know. I believed him.  He meant it.  My dad was not an insane or vicious man. He was very protective of us, in fact. What it said to me was there were horrors of war we hadn't even imagined out there! Before he died a couple of years ago, I asked him about the state of the world and what he thought of the terrorists and the Middle East.  He just looked at me and shook his head, he said, "I have no idea anymore.  I don't know now what to expect. It's more frightening than I've ever seen it."

This is the world the Manhattan Project left for the children of my generation...its generation...to live with.  And, so, the legacy continues.  The legacy continues.  We are inundated with dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels mostly in the young adult genre.  Surprising?  What are we telling our children?

Susan Weiss gives a brilliantly gorgeous portrait of Robert Oppenheimer, the man, the scientist, the husband, and the military guardian of the Manhattan Project.

I found her story of him, his dedicated staff of scientists (fizzlers=physicists & stinkers=chemists), their wives, General Groves the military command officer, the security/concentration camp-like quarters and the deprivations they endured just absorbing. 

I was glued to my chair hour after hour, greedy for more information on Oppenheimer and his men; how the women survived without their husbands though they were on base, isolated, lonely, both men and women drinking too much alcohol and confined to their labs or houses....all sworn to secrecy and silence for years. I was appalled at what they all sacrificed because they believed in the effort. It was heartbreaking to have an inkling of how they may have felt when it dawned on them that their beautiful work, their dedication to truth and learning, to a higher good, would be used as a weapon of mass destruction; and soon!
That there would never again be a safe place on earth, but that the journey of life on earth itself was colored forever by death; and their devoted work had made it so.

Ms Weiss has much to say about the moral dilemmas of  creating the "gadget," as it was called for security purposes.  The men/scientists and Oppie started out earnestly believing that they were on a mission to create a weapon that would end the war with Hitler, and would end all wars forever. 

They believed it was a discovery that would be a valiant thing, something that would cause the world governments to stand down, to share and join in harmony.  Through their discovery, they thought to hand the world the greatest of moral blessings--the reality that this discovery could end the world, which meant no one would want to use it; which meant an end to all future wars. Because they all thought the same way, didn't they?  Well, not the President, not the military, not the Europeans, not the Japanese, not the Russians... 

Not until the war ended with Hitler, and as their work continued, did they actually realize that it would be more than they'd anticipated.  But, didn't they all want to continue the work?  Hadn't the work a life of it's own that was more than the sum of their individual parts?  Weren't they supposed to finish the race to be the first ones there?  People said Oppie was a pawn of the military and the government, that he was tricked--but was he, really? 

Oppenheimer became a shell of a man who fought with his own inner demons.  He was broken by what he had allowed to happen.  He ultimately felt he had "blood on his hands" and that he had committed a mortal sin.  This connection of the hydrogen bomb and its ultimate consequences drained the great scientist of his life's blood.  Though she doesn't mention it, I believe that Oppie spent a great deal of his last years in St. John's, Virgin Islands, walking the beaches.  I wonder if his spirit was ever the same.

That is one side, and now this is the other side of Ms. Weiss's novel: She juxtaposes the questions of the hydrogen bomb race and its affects on the humans involved, with the relationships of a young married couple 50 years after the bomb. 

The human condition; right and wrong, angst and an examination of why we engage in a commitment without really considering the far-reaching good and evil, is studied with her renderings of Pauline and Clifford.


 She has us consider the consequences of marrying someone when slightly in doubt of them, when there are serious differences in world views, and responses are nearly opposite to various circumstances. What happens when we "turn a blind eye" to something when it stands in the way of what we want to do more? Through the life of Pauline and Clifford, we see a microcosm of the struggles and moral consequences that took its toll on the Los Alamos "family" of Dr. Oppenheimer.

Pauline is a disbeliever.  She has a squinty-eyed perspective on life, sees the glass half empty, likes to accentuate the negative and grouse a bit.  After having considered various boyfriends and finding them lacking as marriage partners, she decides she finds Clifford the least offensive.  'though she's doubtful about whether his optimistic, kindly, accepting ways will wear well on her, ultimately.  She's hoping to learn to love him and that his ways will be melded with hers.

What occurs is the same sort of horrors that happen to the men and women who were at the Los Alamos encampment:
isolation in the move & job loss, a husband who's work is all-consuming, less than suitable living conditions, financial constraints, difficult pregnancy.  Lack of communication with each other, boredom, depression, loss of interest, lethargy and alcohol.  Like the women of Los Alamos, Pauline begins to drink just to get through the evening.  And, like Oppie, who is described as a manic chain-smoker, Clifford begins to reengage in smoking.  Self-destructive behaviors.   And, then the question of dissolving the marriage when there are children involved.  The legacy of destruction brought on by faulty decision-making?


 Weiss has written a book that is frankly one I would put on the Best New Author's list at any book store.  This is her first book, although when read it's apparent that she is a well-seasoned writer.  Her novel is a compelling read.  It's nearly 500 pages were worth every line and paragraph in interesting detail.  It's a book for full discussion over dinner with like-minded friends.

Her characters are lush and so fully developed I could almost identify them as people I've known.  The situations she places Pauline in that lead her into self-discovery are perfect!  Pauline's heartbreaking moments are so real.  Though Clifford is an unassuming guy, his character is strong and charming; his devotion, trust and love refreshing.  He's the man we want our daughters to marry because he'll always be good to them.  Won't he?  Or, is that unassuming charm hiding his passive aggressive tendencies? 

There are so many perfect and profound moments in this highly unlikely novel.  In this "find" of a novel, we have a lush and amazing story that has the ability to shake us someplace deep inside. 

There's a key here to the mystery we've been living.  There's some insight here to understanding.  Not that all is forgiven, but that if one looks at it from the perspective of one's own marriage or personal relationships...perhaps there's a glimmer of acknowledgement that our hidden agendas can become the undoing of us.  That not taking time to consider all the possibilities, and acting too hurriedly may ultimately cause a chain reaction of the deepest kind of regret. 

There are other epiphanies from this fine novel which I simply dare not disclose because you will want to find them yourself.  I urge you to go on the hunt, you lovers of a great book, you seekers and finders...

Deborah/TheBookishDame   gives this 5 shining stars!

I'm happy to have been a TLC Tour Host for this book.

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