Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival.
One June day, an old book arrives on Simon's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of “mermaids” in Simon's family have drowned–always on July 24, which is only weeks away.
As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save Enola?
I found The Book of Speculation through a friend’s suggestion. The plot centers around a librarian named Simon Watson and it so happens that my friend is a librarian as well. Copasetic so to speak. The book in itself is a pleasure to hold because the author took the time to learn about bookbinding and paper and materials and created a book you can hold with the feel of something old in your hands. It’s not any older than the copy you find, but it has that feeling which is central to the story as it unfurls between the present and the past. Simon lives in a crumbling house hanging on the edge of a cliff and it’s about to fall into the ocean. His mother drowned when he and his sister, Enola, were young. The plot of the book travels between the present where you see how Simon’s life has turned out and a parallel life his family lived over generations. There’s a mystery clouding his family history in which young women drown at a certain age. Is it a curse and did his mother fall victim to it? I liked it. I enjoy genres where you mix in the past and present, magic, history, storytelling, danger, and mystery. It may not end the way you think, but it will stay with you.
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.
A suspense novel from the first word. An easy mystery to read. It has the usual recipe of a mystery yet reading it leaves you unsure of who is really telling the story and where they are during the telling of it. The Wife Between Us was supposed to be made into a film and our book club was disappointed it wasn’t since, if done in the right way, it could be a good thriller on screen. As it is, you can imagine what it would have been like with the clip below.
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fineis the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart
Hands down one of the most discussed books our club has had this year. Eleanor Oliphant has been very popular with other clubs and a bestseller. It explores the theme of loneliness and if you are truly living a life or merely existing. Eleanor you’ll find has been a victim of abuse and it colors her present. It’s not overly graphic, but it may disturb you in the beginning. I texted another member that I did not want to push past the first couple of chapters since I did not want to read about her past. My friend reassured me it did get better and was worth finishing. She read it, processed whether or not she liked it, decided she might, and planned to read it again. It is that sort of book. There are light comical moments mixed in with pretty dark moments in this young woman’s life. Things are going okay until they are not. I am glad I read it. It sets up home with you for awhile, and if you find others who’ve read it, you feel a compulsion to discuss it. What is it you just read? The book is supposedly being made into a film by Reese Witherspoon and I hope it is. The themes are certainly worth engaging people on a visceral level. Here’s the author, Gail Honeyman’s perspective along with a reviewer who has 5 reasons she'd recommend it:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.
A fun story from beginning to end with sadness, loneliness, loss of self, and reinvention all included. Anyone who is married with children who changes their lives for their family will appreciate Bernadette’s struggles. Maybe not to the extreme she’s changed herself, but everyone has to face a different identity when they become part of a family. Bernadette’s present is one quite a few moms work through where they had a career before marriage that defined who they were and where they were going. Then, you find yourself married and perhaps staying home as a mother and learning how to navigate parenthood and what you are willing to give up for your new life. What if you didn’t want to play the dutiful mother along with a standard set in your community and school? What if you were rebellious and did exactly the opposite of what other mothers were doing? Would you be an outcast and would you care? If you had a chance to go back and live the life you gave up, would you open that door? All of these themes are explored with good writing and imagination along with one of the best school disaster scenes I’ve read in an event gone hilariously wrong. Cate Blanchett and Kristen Wiig are set to star in the film version coming out this August. The trailer is below, and although I hate they give a lot of the story away, it looks like it will be a fun film.
Whatever you're doing this summer I hope it involves reading. And, may whatever you're reading be good!
by Jennifer Graham
