REVIEW: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

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My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

"How did you get to be the woman you are today?"

When Addie Baum's 22-year-old granddaughter, Ava, asks her grandmother this very question, she is regaled with the wonderful narrative of Addie's life, reliving every vivid moment from the time she was 15, a young Jewish girl growing up in Boston during the early 20th century. Addie Baum, now 85, was a smart and spunky young spitfire, with progressive ideas for the time she was living in. We get to see the world through her eyes, and to experience many world changing events going on around her, from child labor and women's suffrage to fighting with her parents to allow her to remain in school. She's loved, she's lost, but she was always been her own person. She's a strong likeable character with a knack for telling a story, which I suppose is really the author's knack, but the way it was written, you never felt like she was reciting, but definitely reliving.

This was such an interesting and engaging read, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this book since it's not a genre I normally read. Historical fiction, yes, although there's usually an element of fantasy or steampunk to my usual historical reads. This book, while still fiction, was simply a well-written piece of fiction told in an autobiographical memoir style.

Since it took place in Boston, and setting was such an important element to this story, I knew I had to read it. I've been in California five years now, but I often long for home and there's lots of things I miss about New England, and Boston in particular. So much of this story elicited strong feelings of place within me. I could truly picture myself walking along the streets of the North End, small little tenements lining each side, or down the cafe-lined streets of Hanover Street. The author certainly has a knack for emoting with a place, and I loved experiencing it through this novel.

I don't know a lot about Jewish families and traditions, having only experienced them from the outside, but so much of the Jewish family dynamics reminded me of my own Italian roots, from which I'm descended on my mother's side. I truly felt like I took a very entertaining, and yes educational, trip through history after reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.

#77 Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

My Rating: 6 out of 10 stars
I found this collection of short stories about the author’s life somewhat amusing, though I don’t think I got quite the shock value Burroughs intended. Some of the stories had me chuckling, but others I found myself simply saying so what. I found him to be extremely vain and shallow, and fortunately he sees himself with these qualities too so he wasn’t deluding himself which made me feel better about him. (I really dislike shallow people but I suppose I can stand them a bit more when at least they realize how shallow they are.)

His story about magical thinking really rang true though. There are no coincidences, and if you put enough energy into your thoughts and desires, you can affect change in the world around you. It’s one of the premises of many earth-based religions. Though he approached the subject as if everyone thought he was crazy because he believed it. His exact beliefs about baby Jesus and a cow though, that was pretty cute. But again, each of us is entitled to envision divinity in our own manner, like different facets of a diamond, all paths to the same thing, and all that…

I remember also thinking, while I was reading this, that though he had a fucked-up life, and did some wacky things, my own life would probably be just as comedic and shocking were I to put all my past experiences into a book. I had my own strange oral surgery experience, a somewhat similar rodent/rat incident, and my own way of dealing with door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses that seems to come up at every party I attend. But this journal entry isn’t about my own experiences; I bring it up only to make the point that a lot of these stories didn’t strike me as strange as they may have others possibly because I’ve had just as strange experiences in my own life.

That said, though I found the book interesting enough to continue reading all the way through, I think it was about half way that I began to find them getting a bit more dull. Again, most likely just the way they affected me personally.

See the BookCrossing journal page for this book for more reviews and information. See more progress on: In 2005 read 100 books.

REVIEW: Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska

My Rating: 5 out of 10 stars

I read this as part of a bookring started by SandDanz, it not being the type of book I'd usually pick up of my own accord. However, with SandDanz's recommendation, I decided to give it a whirl. Let me also preface this review by stating that my rating and review stems from my own personal preferences as opposed to how I believe it will be received by others.

The plot was fairly decent. I appreciated what Jane, the author, who's also the main character, was doing by coming out, placing her ad, and trying to get what she wants out of life, despite society's frowning on such behaviour. I applaud her courage and strength of self for such actions. However, much of the book also tells the story of her life leading up to her current age of 67, and I found it more difficult to empathize with this part of her life. Sure, it gave me a bit more appreciation for the kind of sexually repressed environment she was raised in, and the fact that she was able to overcome all that later in life. But times of sexual repression have always been a major sore spot for me. People who are afraid to talk about sex, express their sexuality, or even look at or touch their own bodies... well stuff like that just raises my hackles. I'd have never been able to live before the time of the sexual revolution, for I'd most certainly have been put down for sure, or hung up as the case may be. ;) Perhaps in a past life, I was a victim of some sort of sexual repression, and thus the need to be such a free-spirited, sexually-liberated woman now. The point I'm making is that because of all this, certain parts of her story made me angry, when it was clear at the time that that wasn't the author's intention, and because of all this, I felt more emotionally distanced from the main character during all these parts of the story. (I wonder if this will make sense to anyone reading this besides myself.)

In any case, I also disliked all the timeline jumping around she did, sometimes even within a single paragraph, and more often than not, multiple times in a single chapter. Often times, while reading of a particular event, I kept forgetting whether it was taking place while she was much younger, or closer to the present day, or even somewhere in between. A journal format, similar to the way Bridget Jones's Diary was written, would've probably worked better for this book, making the constant shifts between timelines easier to focus on.

Okay, now that I got the stuff I didn't like out of the way first, let me tell you what I did. I definitely appreciated the tales of Jane's more current adventures, after she placed the ad, and began to let go of all her hangups, misconceptions, and paranoia. I empathized more with this later-in-life Jane, and though she still had a hard time with certain things, she was starting to slough away all the bullshit that had been burned into her (brainwashed) all her life. I was happy that in the end, she finally seemed to let go of the last of her inhibitions and *gasp* even had sex with the light on! That last hurdle finally being overcome. Shouts of "Bravo!" and "You Go Girl!" immediately come to mind. :)

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