The One & Only-Fantasy Football for Women by Emily Giffin

Emily Giffin is a multi-NYT's best selling author.  This story is set in Texas around the sport of football.  The players are Shea, a young sports reporter who loves not only the game of football but the football Coach of her college alma mater.  Coach who is the father of her life-long best friend Lucy.  The pre game story is She, an only child & her single mom were recruited by Lucy's family since the girls were infants, as part of Coach's home team.   The novel begins with the death of  Coach's beloved wife.  At the half in the novel,  Shea's paternal feelings towards Coach become more than just familial affection.  This should raise a huge penalty flag.  Lucy discovers her best friend Shea & her father have become romantically linked and a brawl ensues.  Shea is forced to chose between Lucy's dad or Lucy's life forever.  There's more to this light weight chick-lit story: domestic violence, loyalty and the obsession with football & hero worship.  Shea says "maybe it was sacrilegious to admit that I felt closer to God inside the stadium than in church on Christmas Eve."  I say ooh GIRL CODE - it's profane to become sexually active with your friend's father especially when you've known him your entire life.  This is way out of bounds.  The One & Only is a fast, trash read & the only book I will read by Emily Giffin.      

The Days of Abandonment by Italian writer Ferrante-Hell Hath No Fury

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  Elena Ferrante (b. Naples 1943) has the flames of Hell burning off the pages of her novel "The Days of Abandonment."  Olga, a devoted wife to Mario & mother of their 2 young children, is devastated when her husband leaves her for a younger woman.  Olga's outrage whiplashes the reader between pity and repulsion with her behavior & mental state. Olga  mourns "when you don't know how to keep a man you lose everything,…what happens when, overflowing with love, you are no longer loved, are left with nothing."  Olga loses her grasp on sanity.  She becomes obsessed with getting Mario back.  She develops a mania fantasizing on his salacious relations with his lover.  "I thought only of him, of how it happened that he had stopped loving me, of the necessity that he should give me back that love... I made a list for myself of everything he owed me."  The extremes of Olga's anguish impair her abilities to function & care for her children.  Ferrante's piercing writing of heartbreak & shameless days of abandonment is unflinching & convincing.   I admired this elegiac novel of sorrow &  absolution.  "There was no longer anything about him that could interest me.  He wasn't even a fragment of the past, he was only a stain, like the print of a hand left years ago on a wall."

Melinda's Top 10 Best Books of 2014

My list consists of what I have read in the past year.  The list includes Non-Fiction as well as Fiction and covers an international group of writers.  In alphabetical order:

A Constellation of Vital Importance - set in worn torn Chechnya by Anthony Marra

Americana - by Nigerian author C. Adichie

A Tale for the Time Being - by Canadian author Ruth Ozeki

Levels of Life - Non-Fiction by British author Julian Barnes

On Such a Full Sea - by Korean author Chang-rae Kee

Suspicion Nation - Non-Fiction by American Lisa Bloom

The Days of Abandonment - by Italian author Elena Ferrante

The Life of an Unknown Man - by Russian author Andrei Makine

The Sound of Things Falling - by Colombian author Juan Vasquez

Times Present and Times Past - by Irish author Deidre Madden

I also recommend:

The Rose that Grew from Concrete - a collection of poetry by Tupac Shakur

The Sunflower an autobiography by Austrian writer Simon Wiesenthal & collection of essays by others on the subject of the possibilities & limits of forgiveness

A TALE for the TIME BEING- by Ruth Ozeki-A Testament for Humanity

Ruth Ozeki is a Canadian-American novelist, filmmaker & Zen Buddhist priest.  Her spellbinding novel, A TALE for the TIME BEING was short listed for the Man Booker in '13.  Amongst the flotsam & jetsam along a desolate Canadian island, a Hello Kitty lunch box is uncovered.  Ruth, a novelist living on the island with her husband, salvages the writings & possessions of Nao, a Japanese teenager.  Ruth soon becomes immersed in Nao's tale and is driven to discover her fate.  The expansive storytelling flows magically between time and place.  Nao writes of her tormented life, her salvation with her great-grandmother, a Zen Buddhist nun and what she learns of her great-uncle, a Kamikaze pilot in WWII.  A TALE is a philosophical search for understanding of  "the silly metaphysical business of life-identity, society, individualism, totalitarianism, human will."  The mystical  beauty of this book is boundless.  Nao as a little girl feared nightmares.  Her father told her "Remind yourself it's just a dream. And then wake-up. - But what if I can't get back in time?  Then I'll come and get you."  

N/F The BOYS in the BOAT, American Champs @ the Berlin Olympics

The Boys in the Boat is the historic novel of 9 Americans & their epic quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics written by Daniel Jame Brown.  This topic should float your boat but it won't.  The era in America during the great depression & dust bowl of the 1930's is a very bleak but of major significance  in our country's history.  Abroad, Hitler is rising to power and the seeds of hatred & another world war are brewing.  We admire but learn more than we care for a band of young men vying arduously for a spot in the crew boat @ Washington Univ. and the construction of their boats.  I did find it illuminating   grasping the life-transofrming experience of rowing. "the prospect o;f finding in themselves something they did not yet know they possessed."  However, I'm skipping ship midstream, nothing of relevance has occurred.  I'm 1/2 way through this turgid & disappointing book & dropping my paddles.  The elements are here to assemble a fast paced, winning novel.  I found The Boys in the Boat slow rowing.

BARK short stories by Lorrie Moore, worth yapping about

Lorrie Moore (b. Amer. 1957) is a an award winning novelist & short story writer.  Her previous short story collection BIRDS of America was a Nat'l best seller.  In her recent book of short stories BARK proves again she deserves to be ranked along with great writers such as Alice Munroe, John Updike and J.D. Salinger.  BARK is a wry & astute look at life,  "Every day there was something new to mourn and something old to celebrate."  The stories are loosely threaded on failed relationships, single parenting, aging & dealing with loneliness.  In short, basically everyday experiences & emotions.  While yapping about both love & cruelty, dogs are omnipresent in her stories.  The animals' laissez faire attitudes contrast sharply with the highly charged emotions of their owners.  Moore's characters are more in the middle in their outlooks; despairing, but holding on hoping for better times.  "Perhaps everyone had their own way of preparing to die.  Life got you ready. Life got you sad."  BARK is a smart compilation of stories to make you howl in amusement.

BROKEN MONSTERS-Not Altogether Great Crime/Thriller

BROKEN MONSTERS is a crime novel written by Lauren Beukes (b.  S.  Africa 1976.)  She sets her killer thriller in rotting Detroit with a gruesome murder/amalgamation.  The murderer is revealed towards the beginning but you'll be vested by Detective Gabriella's (Gabi) search for the killer before the killer strikes again.  The victims are mutilated & grossly reassembled using animal parts.  Oops, buzz kill - there are more victims.  This crime/thriller is engaging due to the relationships between Gabi & her daughter Layla & Layla's friendship with Cas.  Layla is a bright h.s. student struggling to fit into a new school & adjust to her parent's divorce.  At school, Layla is befriended by gorgeous, bumptious Cas and so begins a beautiful friendship.  We get a keen perspective into the lives of today's teens, & their obsessions with their iPhones & social networking.  Layla & Cas are not the only media casualties.  There are other media hounds consumed with creating their 15 minutes of fame.  The situations the 2 girls create for themselves & find themselves in are disturbing.  The setting in Detroit is a seedy backdrop of urban decay.  Det. Gabi's resolve to find the murderer keeps us interested the case.  Unfortunately, the dramatic climax is overblown & crumbles the credible build-up of intensity.  BROKEN MONSTERS is a quick read.  It provides a sharp look at today's teen culture & the distorted effects of our social media culture.  It falls short of being a very suspenseful & clever thriller.