Reviews

I’m not one for doing the whole of anything: the Appalachian Trail, canoeing the Amazon, skiing across Antarctica, but yes I can see the attraction of visiting every country in the world. The problem is that it is a moving target. Governments change, countries come and go, and unless you are super rich “doing” the world in a timely fashion is not possible.

Yet the inventive, gutsy, rule-breaking Podell finally managed to complete them all though it did take a half century. He began his foreign travels with a quick trip to Canada when he was 24. And yes, he considered this international travel light.

He just completed a degree in international studies. A few years later, as editor of an adventure magazine, he decided he was tired of sending people off on exotic jaunts and staying home, so he set off with a friend to complete the longest land journey ever attempted with his good friend Steve. They got sponsors to pay for the trip and hired a photographer.

Aristotle and Dante is a sensitive, thoughtful portrayal of friendship and finding yourself. Both of the main characters are teen boys who feel out of place in the world around them, until they find each other. Together they navigate the ups and downs of teenage life; friends (or lack of them), family, independence, and love. 

An added bonus of this particular book are the complex parent child relationships. Unlike many YA novels, the parents in this book are very present in their sons' lives. Dante is the only child of intellectuals and Aristotle is the youngest child of self made, hard working people. Both of them love their parents, but both of them find different aspects of their lives hard, if not impossible, to share with them.

This is a great realistic fiction for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider. The world is a big place, just because you haven't found where you belong yet, doesn't mean you won't.

The Liar, the new book from Nora Roberts, will be released next week.  While you’re waiting for your copy to reach the hold shelf, why not try these other books about women dealing with the aftermath of their husband’s secret lives?

The Liar by Nora Roberts

Shelby only found out her husband married her under a false name after he went missing and was presumed dead.  Devastated, she returns to her hometown with her daughter ready to start over-in life and in love. Shelby discovers a key to a safe deposit box.  What she finds inside convinces her that not only was her marriage a lie, but the stranger she was sharing her life with is a very dangerous man.  Roberts’ expert storytelling leaves the reader on the edge of her (or his!) seat right until the very end.

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Grace is a successful New York Therapist with a beautiful family and is about to start a PR blitz for her forthcoming self-help book about relationships-and how to identify the signs women tend to ignore that lead to heartbreak.  Active in her son’s school, Grace is shocked when one of her fellow committee members, Malaga, is found murdered.  Grace’s husband, Jonathon, has always been distant emotionally and works long hours, so it took Grace awhile to realize that he was missing, and not in the Midwest for a conference like he claimed.  Tension increases as Grace (and the reader) realizes that Jonathon’s disappearance and Malaga’s death are related.  Korelitz masterfully expresses Grace’s increasing anxiety as she pieces together her husband’s secret life while her own is falling apart.

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

The lives of three seemingly unrelated women collide when one of the women, Cecilia, finds a letter from her husband to be opened only in the event of his death.  Concerned, she reads the letter and everything she thought about her marriage begins unravel.  Meanwhile, Tess is facing her own marriage problems.  Her husband has just confessed that he and Tess’s cousin are in love.  Tess moves her young son back to her hometown to live with her mother and starts a relationship with the local school’s P.E. teacher.  Rachel, the school secretary, believes the P.E. teacher murdered her only daughter thirty years earlier. These three women’s lives collide in unexpected and disturbing turns of events.

The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreeve

A knock on her door at 3am shatter’s Katherine Lyon’s life.  The plane her husband Jack was piloting exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 103 on board.  The investigation indicates a bomb-and implicates Jack as being complicit in the plot.  Katherine desperately tries to protect her daughter from shock after shock as her husband’s secret life comes to light.  Shreeve is expert at revealing game changing details at just the right moment and will leave reader’s wondering just how much they know about their loved ones.

Those of us who read the Little House on the Prairie Series as children have been eagerly awaiting Laura Ingalls Wilder’s posthumous autobiography Pioneer Girl.  The unedited, previously unpublished draft of the autobiography was originally written in 1929 served as the foundation for the Little House series after it was rejected for publication.  A columnist and editor, Wilder wrote about the 16 years her family moved through the mid-West, heavily describing the land and the work.  Unfortunately, the wait for this fantastic annotated autobiography is long, so here are some read alikes the work through while you’re waiting.

Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This compilation contains over 140 articles that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote from 1911-1929 and mostly published in Farmers Week.  They describe life on a Missouri Farm and of a much simpler life.  If what drew you to Prairie Girl was the nonfiction writing of Wilder; then Little House in the Ozarks  is sure to please.

Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen

Ultra educated but unemployed, Lee Lien returns home to help her Vietnamese immigrant parents run their restaurant.  Fascinated since childhood by her mother’s broach, Lee imagined it once belonged to Laura Ingalls Wilder-left in Saigon by Wilder’s daughter, Rose.  One day, Lee’s brother disappears suddenly, with a cryptic message attached to the broach. Lee begins to wonder, and then obsess over if there’s any truth to her fantasy.  Her clues lead her to interesting parallels between Laura and Rose and her and her own mother.  If you’re interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder in a less academic sense, this engaging and character driven novel will delight.