Welcome to The Book Corner and meet your columnists: New York Times bestselling authors Ame Mahler Beanland and Emily Miles Terry, authors of Nesting: It’s a Chick Thing©, Postcards from the Bump: A Chick's Guide to Getting to Know the Baby in Your Belly and It's a Chick Thing©: Celebrating the Wild Side of Women's Friendship. Ame and Emily write about parenting and lifestyle issues for various online communities including Disney’s www.family.com  and www.familyfun.com. Their work has been featured in Family Circle, Glamour, Country Home, U.S.A. Today, Health, and Better Homes & Gardens. Ame lives near Dallas with her husband and two children and Emily resides in the Boston area with her husband and three children. Visit them online at www.itsachickthing.com. 


A letter from Ame and Emily:

As authors, we are delighted to be sitting on the other side of the book review desk for a change! You'll find our tastes a bit eclectic—running the gamut from award-winning literary fiction to fun beach reads, from parenting books to young adult novels and we're ardent fans of the classics. We think that books are the ultimate accessories for your psyche and hope that our recommendations will surprise and delight you. We will strive to introduce you to new authors as well as old favorites, share candid reviews of bestsellers as well as "the best books that no one is reading," and from time to time we'll post exclusive author interviews.

So pour a cup of tea, get comfortable, and lose yourself in a book for a few stolen moments..


SEPTEMBER BOOK CORNER



The World Below by Sue Miller

I love Sue Miller's ability to pull me into the drama of someone else's life--she makes those of my own seem so mild in comparison to the angst ridden plights of her characters. My latest Sue Miller escape was her 2005 novel, The World Below. It's a parallel tale that bounces from the present to the past, contrasting the lives of a granddaughter, Cath, with that of her grandmother, Georgia. I was drawn deeply and intimately into the lives of these women who, though generations apart, bear remarkable similarities--motherless at young ages, married to men who were not what the seemed, and both were victims of circumstance that forced them to make incredibly tough choices--choices they never seemed to be at peace with. Twice-divorced Cath inherits her grandmother's cottage and embarks on a search for midlife answers in rural Vermont. When she finds her grandmother Georgia's journals, she realizes that nothing--marriage, motherhood, life--is never as it seems on the surface. Georgia's story--she married a doctor, the same doctor who prescribed her stay in a sanitarium for tuberculosis where her life if forever changed. A poignant, emotionally charged tale unfolds contrasting and comparing the lives of these women and Cath seems to indeed find some "midlife answers" from a woman she dearly loved but really never knew.

Miller is an expert, detailed storyteller and the voyeuristic quality to her writing that makes you feel as if you are reading something you should not be. On that note sometimes there's too much information--I found myself cringing at some of the revelations. I was sorry for these characters, as if they'd been betrayed--that's how real Miller's characters become to you.

A good read that will make you think.

                                                                                          • • •

Reviewed by Ame Mahler Beanland, "Southlake Mom" and co-author of the New York Times Bestseller Nesting:It's a Chick Thing and Postcards from the Bump 




AUGUST BOOK CORNER



Faithful Place by Tana French


A college friend once told me that if a book makes you feel uncomfortable you should embrace that feeling and keep reading. I couldn’t help remembering this wise advice as I read Tana French’s new novel, A Faithful Place. But let me back up--I envy any of you who haven’t discovered author Tana French yet, for you have a treat ahead of you. A Faithful Place is French’s third book. Her first two, In the Woods and The Likeness, are literary thrillers along the lines of The Secret History or Water for Elephants. They hook you in with a disappearance or murder mystery, but they feed your brain with authentic dialogue, vivid setting and enthralling characters. 
 
Set in Dublin, A Faithful Place begins with the discovery of an old suitcase belonging to Frank Mackey’s high school sweetheart, Rosie. The appearance of the suitcase drags Frank back to the gritty old neighborhood he abandoned two decades ago. There Frank is forced to face his family if he is to solve the mystery of Rosie’s disappearance.  Frank’s family is mostly vicious and cruel and dysfunctional. Part of me felt they were unlike any family I have encountered. Yet another part of me recognized something familiar in their arguments and misunderstandings—and as they say, therein lies the rub. Ultimately this is a book about family and home, and a person who never stayed around long enough to learn how to integrate the various ingredients of his life. This haunts Frank and affects his current life in ways he refuses to accept or understand. Satisfying to the end, the mystery of  “Who dunnit?” is besides-the-point with Tana French, and that is why I savor her books. 

                                                                                          • • •

Reviewed by Emily Miles Terry, a dedicated reader, mother of three, and coauthor of the New York Times Bestseller, Nesting: It's a Chick Thing and Postcards from the Bump.




JULY BOOK CORNER




Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende

Critics label Allende as a "magical realist" but I think she's simply a great storyteller with the nerve and imagination to tackle sweeping tales that cover vast expanses of geography, history, politics and human drama. In Ines of My Soul Allende spins an epic tale loosely based on the real life Ines Suarez, a Spanish colonist turned conquistador in the founding of Chile in 1540. While this novel is less "magical" and more "real" as compared to the lushness her other works--my favorite Allende book is The House of the Spirits--it is a unique perspective with an interesting historical/action/adventure quality. As always, Allende writes with passion, extravagance, and detail so finely tuned that you can smell the empanadas baking and the flowers blooming outside the window.

The book begins with an aging Ines, nearing death, rushing to dictate her memoirs to her step-daughter. A picture of Spanish colonial life unfolds as Ines defies her grandfather and falls lustfully in love with Juan, the most handsome man in town and a "good drinker and cardplayer." She and Juan marry but the great sex life and her adoration are no match for the pull of gold and fame and Juan soon deserts her to pursue wealth and power in the Americas. Lonely and broke, Ines bucks every convention and pushes every limit to book passage and follow the trail of her husband to the New World. When she finds him dead in Peru she resolves to reinvent herself and begin a new life of freedom for herself. Fortune turns one fateful night when she meets the wealthy and powerful Pedro de Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro. She becomes his mistress and together they passionately found cities, lead armies and wage brutal war against the indigenous Chileans.

Ines of My Soul is an adventurous summer read for those who want a romance novel with just enough history and literary delivery to take the guilty edge off.

                                                                                          • • •

Reviewed by Ame Mahler Beanland, "Southlake Mom" and co-author of the New York Times Bestseller Nesting: It's a Chick Thing and Postcards from the Bump