Book vs. Movie: A Simple Favor

I know what a pretentious snot I'm going to sound like here but I really don't watch TV. (Today was a notable exception when I watched a Golden Girls marathon on TV Land while I finished crocheting a baby gift). If the TV is on in our house, 95% of the time it's because Matt is watching a sport or he put on HGTV or Bar Rescue. The point is, I never know what movies are coming out and when, so one day while I was playing on Youtube and I saw an interview with Anna Kendrick on Jimmy Fallon talking about her upcoming (at the time) film A Simple Favor, I got excited. I like Anna Kendrick and it sounded pretty good; kind of like Gone Girl, to be honest. Then a week later Stephen Metcalf of Slate's Culture Gabfest podcast said that this was one of his top favorite movies of the year, so I figured the stars were aligning.

I checked out the paperback and the DVD from the library at the same time (one benefit of being behind in movies is that you can usually just get the DVD when you hear about a movie) and read the book first. I had high hopes for this book. I was hoping it would be as hard to put down as Gone Girl, and in some places it was.

Quick summary with no real spoilers: Stephanie is a mommy blogger who lives in Fairfield County, CT. She meets Emily, a working mom with a powerful job in fashion at school pick-up one day and they hit it off. Stephanie works hard at being a perfect mother while Emily doesn't care about the little stuff. She swears in front of her kid, has martinis in the afternoon while the playdate is going on upstairs, that kind of thing. Stephanie finds Emily exciting. Why Emily wants to hang out with Stephanie becomes clear before too long. It started out kind of twisted and juicy when Stephanie makes an admission about her past but there were times it wasn't as engaging as I would have liked. I found it kind of uneven. That's not to say that it was bad, but...

The movie adaptation was pretty great. I loved its soundtrack of French mood music, I loved all the wardrobe choices for the main characters, and the pacing was consistent. They also made Stephanie a mommy vlogger, which made much more sense for the movie, and it really helped to display her character.

I almost never say this, ever, but the movie was better! I know. I know! If you know me, you know I never say that. (Except for one other time; ahem, Atonement.) I'm glad I read the book but honestly a the adaptation was beautifully done.

So there we go... book: 4/5 stars. Movie: 5/5.

The Nightingale and Inheritance

I finished two books within 24 hours this weekend, one as an audiobook and one as a printed copy. These books were both excellent but have little in common on the surface, so why would I review them together? I'll let you know when we get to spoilers, I promise.

First, The Nightingale. This is the story of two sisters and their involvement in World War 2 in Paris. It's dramatic, spans several years, and includes love in addition to tragedy. Every review I read of it is raving, and I have to say that while I really liked it, it didn't pain me to have to stop listening to go into work or the store like some other audiobooks. It was very detailed and Kristin Hannah does have a gift for placing the reader in a time and place (just as she did in The Great Alone). I don't know what the book was missing for me to make it just that much more compelling, but I still highly recommend it. I should tell you that if you are sensitive to sexual assault, this book might not be for you. It does bother me that so many books that are meant to be dramatic include the female protagonist being raped. This is especially upsetting with male authors. I know it happens and I know the rapist in this book is a literal Nazi, but still.

Now, Inheritance. This is the latest memoir by Dani Shapiro. On a whim, Dani takes an acestery.com DNA test because her husband is ordering one for himself and offers to get her one too. When her results come back, she is shocked to find out that her father isn't actually her father. Both of her parents had died by this time, but she does recall a conversation from years ago when her mother told her that she was conceived at an institution in Philadelphia that specialize in artificial insemination. Just 36 hours later, thanks to Ancestry's database and her husband's Google skills, she figures out exactly who her father is. This only leads to more questions. Did her parents realize that she wasn't actually her father's child? Did her parents understand what kind of "treatment" the clinic was actually performing? And did she have other half-siblings out there? This book is pretty gripping. I think I read it in 24 hours. (Pictured here with the baby cardigan I was crocheting during breaks from reading. OMG IT CAME OUT SO ADORABLE THAT I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE IT AWAY.)

Now for the spoilers. Stop reading now if you don't want them...

The reason I'm pairing them both is that they both ended with a different strong opinion on the same topic: Does everyone have the right to know what his or her paternity is?

Toward the end of The Nightingale, a Nazi soldier is staying at the house with Isabelle and her two children. He uses the power of the knowledge he uncovered about her son to manipulate her and make her allow him to rape her nightly. Predictably, she gets pregnant. She realizes this just before her husband returns from the war and is able to tell her husband that the baby is his without too much concern that he won't believe her. Whether he truly believes her or just doesn't want to think about other possibilities, he goes along with it and this son is never the wiser. At the end of the book, Isabelle tells the readers that while she is willing to finally tell her adult children about her involvement in the resistance in Paris, she will never tell them about Julian's birth. She says that some secrets need to remain hidden.

Dani Shapiro, on the other hand, says that everyone has the right to know where he or she came from. Everyone has the right to his or her origin story. Her story ended well. While she was shocked about her paternity and had to come to terms with the idea that her father wasn't her father, she did a lot of sorting out about what a father is and is not. The man who raised her and passed along his culture and loved her is indeed her father. The donor who was promised that he would never, ever, have to even know if any children came from his donations, is not. He does agree to meet with Dani and she does eventually meet his wife and her half-siblings. It does seem to be a promising beginning for new connections but to Dani, the man who raised her remains her dad. Still, she asserts, she had the right to this information.

I got to attend a discussion and signing with Dani Shapiro at RJ Julia in Madison, CT. If you're kicking yourself for missing it, don't worry. It will be broadcast on Roxanne Cody's Podcast, Just the Right Book. I was only halfway through the book at the time of the signing but the discussion was so interesting and Dani Shapiro was a great speaker.

So what's the answer? Is it one-size-fits-all? Does everyone have the right to know who his or her birth parents are? Are some facts best left in the past? This led to a great discussion on my facebook page. I'd love to know what you all think!

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Love, Loss, and What I Wore by Ilene Beckerman
5/5

This little book is pretending to be about clothes, but don't believe it. Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a memoir of Ilene Beckerman's life (so far). Divided into decades starting with the 1940s, Beckerman gives a two-page spread on significant outfits she's worn in her life. On the left is a narrative, and on the right is a hand-drawn color illustration of the outfit. She starts out with her Brownie uniform, which brought back some memories for me as well. (By the 1980s, most of the Brownies I knew were only wearing sashes, not the full outfit, but I remember going to the mall with my mom and my aunt when I was in first grade to buy the brown sash and the numbers 287.)

Embedded in the descriptions of the colors, the fabrics, and where she bought the clothes are windows into her life. Some are beautiful, some are fun, and some are heart-breaking. I don't want to give any of that away here.

OK, well, here's one. Bust just one. ;)

It's featured in the book 1000 Books to Read Before You Die (of which I've only read about 60... so I need to get on that...) and can be read in one sitting, but please don't rush through this. Let her revelations sneak up on you.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast 5/5

In this graphic novel, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast tells a heart-breaking story. If you're new to graphic novels, you might be surprised that they can be a very effective medium for dark material. Other excellent examples are Maus by Art Spiegelman and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.

In Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast sits us down to tell us the story of how her parents declined in health bit by bit until they died, first her father and then her mother. I felt her sitting me down on her couch and handing me a cup of tea while she explained to me in detail what it was like to realize that she was about to become the adult in the situation, and that as an only child, she was doing it alone. Her mother fell and ended up in the hospital, and this is one of the great mysteries of life to me. When an elderly person falls and breaks a bone, it seems to signal the beginning of the decline. Is it the decline that causes the fall, or does something in the fall accelerate the decline? Her mother clung to her independence and used all the emotional tools she had at her disposal to keep her father from standing up to her and insisting that it's time to consider giving up their apartment. At the same time, her father was starting to show signs of dementia. Finally Roz is able to convince her parents to just look at some facilities, then to just try moving in temporarily.

Roz has to navigate things like health insurance (her parents' insurance won't cover anything that doesn't happen in New York), and hiring a visiting nurse for her mother after her father is gone. I had a few moments that reminded me of when my grandmother and my mother were in the end stages of cancer that made me put the book down for a few minutes just to breathe. Like Roz's mother, who made less and less sense as time went on, my grandmother and I had a few visits after her cancer treatment stopped when she would start a sentence just fine but it would end in word salad. I did tell her that I'd met the man that I am still in a relationship with just a few months before and she told me, based on his first name and the fact that he had a job, that he sounds like, "such a fine man, such a good fine man, and you need to bring him to meet me as soon as you can." Sadly, that never happened, but I'd like to think she would have liked him even though he's not Italian. And like Roz, I also held my mom's hand on her last evening and told her that it really was OK to let go now. The hospice nurse in the book told Roz that sometimes people need to hear that. I don't know if my mother actually heard me, but it wasn't long after I told her that that she did let go. (Unlike Roz's mother, my mom was only 45.)

This book made it onto the list of 1000 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which is how I discovered it. I'd seen it on a shelf at a book store a few months before but honestly the cover didn't grab me and I didn't know what it was about. It just looked like a humor book about an adult child and her parents, which didn't feel compelling. I'm really glad I gave it a shot. If you have an elderly parent or have lived through the loss of a parent, it will hit you hard, but it will be worth it. Whenever anyone tells me that their mother died, I want to make sure they know that we're in the same boat. It feels important to talk about these things.

The Christmas ehhh.....

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

2/5 (I'm feeling generous)

Last week I picked up this little book from my town library. I chose it for two main reasons:

• It fit the "best-seller published the year you graduated high school" prompt for the 2018 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (2019 challenge is here), and
• It was really short and I only had two days left in 2018.

The basic plot of this book is that a couple with a young child is getting tired of their cramped apartment so they respond to an ad in the paper offering free room and board in a mansion across town in exchange for chores, yard work, etc. Basically a lonely old lady wanted some company. 

There is absolutely no conflict in this book. They love the old lady! The old lady loves them! They don't even have to do the chores they really hate! She'll just get someone else to do them! 

The husband in the family is doing a little snooping in the attic. He finds a fancy wooden box full of letters clearly written by the old lady to a mysterious other person that she misses. But who could it be? Considering something else he finds in the attic at the same time, it's really obvious, but it's supposed to be a plot twist that's revealed in the last few pages, so I won't spoil it in case you want to read it.

It's a book that would fit into your purse and has double-spaced font on pages with large margins, so it was perfect for reading in an hour while I washed the kitchen floor with the other hand. It was basically a longform Chicken Soup for the Soul story, which were also really popular at that time. This book was so successful that it has two sequels and a made-for-TV movie. It was #1 on the New York Times Best-Seller list until it was knocked off by The Horse Whisperer.

Maybe I'm being too hard on it, but it didn't do anything for me. Well, that's a lie. It helped me cross that prompt off my reading challenge list in record time, and for that I will be forever grateful!