Hearts of Gold – Curves for Days by Laura Moher

I don't usually choose "romance" novels but I took a chance on this one since it featured a less than ideally sized (meaning not thin) woman, at least one who saw herself that way. I was not disappointed.

Rose, our heroine, is a thirty-something woman who comes from a tough working-class background, and is alone in the world. She comes into a winning lottery ticket that nets her 80 million dollars, and finds herself surrounded with hangers-on and worse in Indianapolis. Wanting to escape that, as well as traumatic memories that led her to drop out of high school, after securing legal and financial help for managing the money, she buys a car and starts driving, eventually landing in a small town in North Carolina, where she begins to create a new life for herself.

Angus, also in his thirties, is a life-long resident of Rose's new town, and has a repetition for his gruff demeanor. He has a one-man contractor business, but also is a part-time mental counselor working with his fellow veterans, who are sufferers of PTSD, have drug and alcohol problems, and in some cases, debilitating effects of injuries from their service.

Rose buys a fixer-upper home and hires Angus as her contractor. Each of them is wary of the other, but gradually they form a friendship, and eventually more. How that all happens, and how the author presents Rose's desire and plan to do something productive with her newly-acquired money, and Angus's work with his clients, along with their ups and downs with each other, makes this novel quite a cut above what the reader might expect from romance fiction. I enjoyed it, was a bit sorry to have it end, and will look for more from this author. 

A Mind Adrift – Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

This book was the first chosen to be read for a newly-formed book club. Had I not been reading it for that purpose, I would not have stayed with it, as I found it both painful and depressing.

Maud, a woman in her early 80s, living in a working-class English town, is moving ever deeper into dementia. Her memory is muddled and she is often confused. She frequently repeats herself, or seems to speak out of context about unrelated details, and asks the same questions over and over, of her daughter, Helen, her granddaughter Katy, and the various "carers" who come to her home on a regular basis.

Maud does not know, or doesn't remember, what has happened to her best friend Elizabeth, and is worried that she is injured, hurt, or the victim of a crime. She goes to Elizabeth's home, repeatedly calls the police about her, and even takes out a missing person ad in the local newspaper, aggravating Peter, Elizabeth's hostile son. She asks Helen about Elizabeth in nearly every conversation. 

I found it shocking that Maud was living alone, even with frequent visits from her daughter, and with her "carers" who make her lunch, and do other things around her home. There are notes and signs put up around the house as reminders, but Maud doesn't grasp their meaning, or remember them. To help herself, she writes her own notes, which she stuffs in her pockets, but then forgets that they are there or what they mean.

Helen, who seems overwhelmed by her circumstances, has clearly not realized or doesn't want to accept that Maud's condition has deteriorated to the point that she should not be alone at all. Eventually this is rectified but handled very gracelessly – Helen sells Maud's house without her truly grasping what is happening, then moves her into her home.

There is another person missing in this story: Sukey (a nickname for Susan), Maud's beloved older sister, who disappeared shortly after World War II when Maud was just a young teenager. Her whereabouts were never resolved. Given that Maud's family lived throughout the bombings of World War II, and the deprivations that followed, it seems likely to me that some of Maud's difficulties are also the long-term result of PTSD – when Sukey did not reappear, Maud was sick in bed for a long time with what seems to have been a physical condition brought on by depression. There are also references to circumstances later, when as a wife and mother, Maud seemed unable to cope.

Having grown up in a family where there were both mental illness and memory loss in those close to me, I found this book quite horrifying. I felt tremendous sympathy for Maud, and for Helen, who was not finding her mother the help she needed, despite what seemed to be her best effort. It felt like a statement to me of what is missing in healthcare for the elderly and the mentally ill, in both the British setting of the book, and in what I have observed in this country. In that way, the novel was very effective, but I can't recommend it for anyone who is deeply disturbed by those issues. 

Never the Same: That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

I believe this is Jennifer Weiner's strongest novel. She has come so far in her writing career with this incisive book.

Diana, an attractive woman nearing 50, who manages a popular, upscale restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was once an intelligent, ambitious teenager who convinced her Boston parents to allow her to spend a summer on Cape Cod working as a mother's helper for a wealthy novelist/college professor and her husband, who own a large, beautiful second home with panoramic views.

Daisy, whose husband gave her that pet name in place of her own, also Diana, is a suburban Philadelphia wife, and the mother of Beatrice, a rebellious teenager. Daisy, in her early 30s, is an accomplished cook, and runs a small catering business out of her very comfortable home, while her husband, Hal, an older and very successful lawyer, rules the roost in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

How, where, and why their lives converge is the focus of the story, which examines the lives and roles of girls and women, friendship, sexual mores and tensions, power issues between men and women, and the devastating trauma that results from date rape.

Modern Tragedy: the Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

This novel is beautifully written, and painfully sad. It vividly conveys the horrors of the Syrian Civil War, still raging now, and the plight of its refugees, and people from other war-town countries, as they seek to find asylum. The descriptions of pre-war Aleppo feel like photographs of a place we will never be able to visit, because it has been mercilessly destroyed, and all of its beauty and life is gone forever.

As I read it, and followed the saga of Nuri, a beekeeper, and his wife, Afra, a painter, I was fascinated and then ashamed of the way Syria and its citizens have been largely forgotten by so many, including our own leadership in the United States. Sadly though, the story of Syria, an ancient civilization with many centers of learning and art, is not unique. What's happening there has happened over and over again through the course of history, in the Middle East, in Africa and in Europe.

Despite all the sadness and privations of Nuri and Afra's experience, there are also moments of beauty and hopefulness that remind us that we should not give up on humanity, and that there is still goodness and kindness to encourage us to go forward, whatever our personal trials may be. Christy Lefteri's novel is compelling and lyrical reading.