Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I won an advance copy of Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Two-Family House several years ago; I can’t remember exactly when, but it had to have been some months previous to its release date in March of 2016.*

There’s a reason for the memory lapse, I promise.

My youngest was born in February of 2015 and was eating well and sleeping through the night by summer; then came the very first of our family’s infamous fall flus.  It hit us all, and it lingered, and for my baby girl, it interfered with an ear infection.  Her ears suddenly got worse instead of better and she ended up on a different antibiotic; what was worse, she threw up what little she ate and had no appetite for days.  When she finally managed to kick all the germs to the curb, she was STARVING, and suddenly I had a 7.5-month-old who was eating in the middle of the night again.  By the time that faded, her sleep habits were shot, and subsequent ear infections meant nothing could be done about that until she got tubes in April of 2016 and then grew accustomed enough to them that I put my foot down about her wanting to fall asleep in Mommy’s (and ONLY Mommy’s) arms.  (Not just at night, mind you, but during the night, any time she woke up, as far as I could tell.  I woke up one night and she was sleeping on my chest; I had NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of getting her out of her crib, but my husband–who sleeps like the dead–was adamant that he hadn’t done it.  I’m pretty sure I got up, got her, and brought her back to bed with me without ever actually waking up at all.)  Sleep re-training had to happen then in order to save my sanity, but in the meantime, 6-8 months passed by in a foggy blur.  Would you like to guess what I wasn’t doing during that period of time?

If your answer is “as much reading as usual, especially of adult fiction that promised to be emotional,” then congratulations! because you are SO very right.  My to-be-read piles exploded, and I’m still trying to recover.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I have if my treadmill hadn’t died, forcing me to move to the elliptical and audiobooks.  My hubby found Loigman’s book on audio and put it on my phone so that I could listen to it while exercising (and while folding laundry and working on puzzles and so many, many more things), and so I am FINALLY able to review it here for my faithful readers’ benefit.  Wahoo!

I have to say, though, The Two-Family House doesn’t make for an easy review.  It’s hard to tell whether Loigman meant for the family secret that’s the catalyst for the story to be known at the beginning or not; her foreshadowing is heavy-handed enough that it was very quickly obvious to me.  That secret is based on a choice made out of a difficult situation and a lack of true emotional health; it only causes more difficult situations all around and worsening emotional health for at least one character, and yet the good that also comes from it is complicated and might not have occurred otherwise.  Reviews on Goodreads for this one are interestingly mixed, but when I finished listening to the audiobook (complete with accents that definitely helped immerse me in the setting!), my reactions surprised me.

1.  If I’d realized the level of complicated family dynamics and tragedy involved, I never would have read it, because that’s not really my thing.
2.  I’m DESPERATELY grateful not to have read this when I had a newborn.  Emotional roller coasters shouldn’t be ridden during times of serious hormonal   fluctuation.
3.  I was surprisingly glad to have read it, despite it not being my thing.
4.  Some reviewers complained about Loigman’s characterization, but I emotionally engaged with the main characters early on.
5.  I wanted to slide into easy judgments and dismissal of frustrating characters more than once, and yet Loigman gave me just enough for each character that   I couldn’t.  Human beings are complex, and she portrayed that complexity successfully.
6.  I was more satisfied with the ending than I ever could have imagined being.
7.  I think–I really think–that I liked it.  And considering where it went as a story, that’s a pretty impressive thing for me to say.
8.  If my description appeals to you, you should definitely read it.  If you’re on the fence, give it a try.   And if you think it’s not your thing, I respect that–but   remember, it’s not mine either.  And yet…

*Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the advance copy and the opportunity to give it an unbiased review.

I wasn’t feeling the emotional roller coaster that is my current audiobook today–not on the Sabbath.  Luckily, my hold on Andrew Clements’ Frindle came in this weekend, and so while I got in my elliptical time and then worked on our current puzze–a 1,000-piecer this time–I listened to the whole thing.

It was a pleasure.

I know not everyone grew up in a small town, in a traditional sort of elementary school, with teachers that had been teaching for years and doing a good job of it, but I was blessed to.  Clements captures the traditional, slightly white-picket-fence growing up experience beautifully, and his students and teachers are the perfect mix of fun and discipline and tradition and innovation and–oh, all the feels.  I am a teacher both by nature and by education, and I was generally an engaged student, and Frindle was a perfect bit of homey, slightly-fairy-tale-ish nostalgia.  Nick is thoroughly likable, Mrs. Granger a teacher to remember, and the birth of a word makes for some educationally entertaining lessons on language.  I’m excited to pass this one on to my son!

AND just as fascinating.  I was lucky enough to win an ARC of Hero of the Empire:  The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill from Doubleday Books before it was released; at the time, however, I had a 1-year-old, and my capacity for concentration on nonfiction was seriously impaired.  (She stopped sleeping through the night at 7 months or so because of all the ear infections.  She eventually got tubes, but it wasn’t a pretty time in our lives!)  I’m finally starting to catch up with my ARCs, however, and Hero of the Empire was an incredible read.  Thanks to 10th grade history and Mr. Bowes, I knew that the Boer War was ‘brutal and bloody’ and that the British Empire had a much harder time of it than it expected to, but Winston Churchill turned out to be even more fascinating of an individual than I’d realized.  His unapologetic ambition, his love of action, his single-minded pursuit of fame and glory to advance his political career, and his chutzpah make his story feel like a legend.  It begins with him escaping his South African prison without his intended companions–who happened to have the map, the compass, and the provisions.  Churchill had some money, 4 chocolate bars, and a crumbling biscuit in his pocket and 300 miles of enemy territory (in Africa!) to cross.  How he ended up in the prison in the first place, how he made it to safety, and what he did next all make for riveting reading; it’s also a testament to the courage of strangers and either unbelievable luck or divine intervention, depending on your point of view.  This is a well-written, well-researched, and well-told story that no history buff should miss.