Books Set in North America; Washington, D.C.

Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, by Nina Totenberg (2022)

The title of this book would lead the reader to think that it is about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  It is, but it is also about Nina Totenberg.  There was far too much about Nina Totenberg and I would have liked more about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The book is about friendships of all kinds.  Nina talks about her friendships with her husbands, other reporters, other judges and justices.  With few exceptions, the friendships she discusses are well-known people, name-dropping.

There are many parallels in the lives of Ruth and Nina.  Both women were children of Jewish immigrant parents.  Both women were leaders in their respective fields, both women used their positions to help shape the political discourse of American society.

They were friends for over 50 years.  They first met in the early 1970s when Nina was reporting on the Supreme Court and Ruth was arguing a case before the High Court.  Slowly, over time, they became fast friends.  We only see snippets of Ruth in this book, however.  For this reason, I could only give this book 3 stars.  I wanted more Ruth and less Nina.

Read:  March 27, 2026

3 Stars

Books Set in North America, Oregon

The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (2021)

Read:  June 8, 2025

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Tehran, Iran

The Lion Women of Tehran, by Marjan Kamali (2024)

Read: September 3, 2024

5 Stars

Books Set in North America, California, United States

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, by Robert Dugoni (2018)

Sam Hill was born with a rare genetic condition known as ocular albinism, which makes his eyes red.  His mother enrolled him into a Catholic Elementary School, Our Lady of Mercy, but the school initially rejected his application due to his eye condition.  The school feared that the other children would make fun of him.  They did.  They called him the Devil Boy, and Sam Hell.  It didn’t help that the school’s principal, Sister Beatrice, had it in for him and made him miserable.

Sam’s only school friends wer Ernie Cantwell, the only Black student at the school, and Michaela “Mickie” Kennedy, a rebel in her own right.

Sam’s mother is extremely devout and tells Sam that each of his trials and tribulations is a result of “God’s will.”  Sam endures the bullying from a classmate who comes from a home where violence rules.  Forty years later, he is confronted by the bully again and learns time has not taken the edge off his foe.

This is a novel about faith.  Although Sam loses the faith of his mother, his mother’s teachings comfort him throughout is life.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Read:  August 25, 2023

4.5 Stars

Books Set in North America, United States, Seattle, Washington

Firefly Lane, by Kristen Hannah (2008)

 

This is a novel about a life-long friendship between two women who couldn’t be more different.  They became friends as young teens, when Tully Hart and her hippy mother, Cloud, moves into the house across the street from Kate Mularkey.  Although Kate and her mother have the normal teen mother-daughter struggles, she comes from a stable middle-class family.  Tully, on the other hand, lives mostly with her grandmother unless her mother floats into her life for brief periods.

 

Tully is a risk taker.  She decided early on that she was going to become a star reporter.  Nothing will stop in her way.  As teens, both girls were going to pursue that path, but that wasn’t the route that Kate wanted.  Kate knows that Tully always gets what she wants.  When both young women intern at the local television station, both are smitten by Johnny.

 

Sadly, this book is filled with cliches.  I quickly tired of the constant pop culture references beginning in the 1970s and continued throughout the length of the book, which ended around 2008.  The author constantly teases the reader into thinking that a rift will divide the friendship, and hints that the rift will be over Johnny.  The rift, which the reader knows is coming, is actually over another matter.

 

As Kate and Johnny’s daughter, Marah, becomes a teenager, she and Kate enter into their own teen-age mother/daughter struggle.  Marah turns to her “Aunt Tully”, who typically takes Marah’s side.  Hence the rift, which actually came about when Tully basically accused Kate of being an overprotective mother on live television.  After this event, the two women didn’t speak to each other for some unspecified years.

 

The point the author is trying to make is that in life, family is what matters most.  This comes only in the last 30 or so pages (and this is quite a long book).  As the book nears the end, we learn that Kate, who married Johnny after she became pregnant, has inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) and is dying.  She thinks that Tully is after Johnny but has reconciled with that thought.  Although Johnny had a one-night stand with Tully before he and Kate married, he was truly in love with Kate.

 

I read the book in its entirety.  If this had been the first book I read by Kristen Hannah, it would not have been inclined to read her other books.

 

Read:  October 10, 2021

 

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe: Switzerland

The Gustav Sonata, by Rose Tremain (2016)

 

Gustav Perle grew up in poverty in Switzerland in the years at the end of World War II.  His father died when he was too young to have any clear memory of him and is mother, whom he adores, is distant and bitter.  In kindergarten, Gustav befriends Anton Zweibel, a boy his same age, who is a promising musician.

 

The novel is written in three parts.  In Part One, Gustav and Anton are young boys who are constant companions.  Anton’s family, who are wealthy, take Gustav on vacations with them.  Emilie, Gustav’s mother is not keen on Anton and his family because they are Jewish.  She is bitter because she blames her husband’s death on saving Jews during the War.

 

Part Two focuses on Emilie and her early life and how she fell in love with Erich Perle.  Erich was an Assistant Police Officer.  In his position, he helped Jewish refugees into Switzerland after the country had closed its doors.  When his actions were discovered, he lost his job and was reduced to finding a menial job with poor pay.  Although Emilie loved Erich and called referred to him as a hero, she could never forgive him for plunging the family into poverty.

 

Gustav and Anton are middle-aged in Part Three.  After having been separated for years, each with his own life, the two friends come together again.  The bond they formed as children remained strong.

 

This was a beautifully written novel.

 

5 Stars

 

Read:  May 28, 2021

 

 

Books Set in the United States: South Carolina

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy (2009)

South of Broad is a novel narrated by Leopold Bloom King.  His mother was a James Joyce scholar, hence his name.  The novel begins on Bloomsday (June 16), 1969 in Charleston, South Carolina when young Leo is a troubled teenager.

Leo adored his older brother, Steve.  After Steve committed suicide, it was Leo who found his brother’s lifeless body.  No suicide note was found, so his death remained a mystery to the family.

Leo was an under achiever and feels that his mother somehow wished that it was him and not Steve who had died.  Leo’s family is devoutly Catholic ~ a theme that runs through the novel.

Shortly after Steve died, Leo was caught with a large amount of drugs in his pocket. Although the drugs did not belong to him, Leo refused to name the individual to whom the drugs belonged. As a result, Leo was under court probation and community service.

On that fateful day in June 1969, Leo met his new neighbors who were about his age ~ Sheba Poe, the drama queen, and Trevor Poe, who was gay and proud of it, along with their alcoholic mother.  Their father may or may not be in the picture.  He was also ordered by his mother (who was principal in the public high school), to befriend two orphans ~ Niles and Starla.  Then, he attended a luncheon at the ritzy yacht club where he met Chad, and his sister Fraser, and Chad’s girlfriend, Molly.  They were kicked out of their private school and must attend the public school.  These three were of wealthy families with nothing in common with Leo’s middle-class upbringing.

As if that were not enough, integration has come to Charleston, and the new football coach is Black.  Leo it told by both his mother and the new coach to befriend the coach’s son, Ike. Eventually, Leo, Sheba, Trevor, Niles, Starla, Chad, Fraser and Molly become inseperable.  This all seems so improbable.

The novel recounts their trials and tribulations, which the reader learns involves domestic abuse, sexual abuse, the AIDS epidemic, class differences, racial integration, and Hurricane Hugo ~ all of which happens to these teenagers. The novel goes back and forth in time from the late 1960s to the early 2000s.

It was a bit of a mess, with all the “social” issues occurring to the main characters.  The novel would have been more interesting if the author had focused on one or two of these issues, rather than try to discuss them all in one book.

I enjoyed the first 300 pages, but the book went off the rails in the last 200 pages. I finished reading this book at Starbucks.  A young college student saw that I was reading a book by Pat Conroy and asked me about it.  He said that he liked Pat Conroy.  After I finished the book, I gave it to him.

Read: May 19, 2019

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe and the United States

The Fortunate Ones, by Ellen Umansky (2017)

This novel travels back in time between the life of young Rose Zimmer, who was a young girl living in Vienna at the beginning of World War II, and the mid-2000s, when she is an old woman living in Los Angeles.  One of her earliest memories is of her mother, who, after suffering a miscarriage, asked that the painting The Bellhop, by Chain Soutine, be brought to her room.

At the time, young Rose thought the painting was ugly and couldn’t understand her mother’s attracting to the painting.  The image of her mother and the painting, however, stayed with her.  By 1939, it was dangerous for Jews living in Austria.  Although her parents couldn’t leave the country, they were able to get their children, Rose and her older brother, out via the Kindertransportto England.

After the War, Rose married and moved to Los Angeles.  The painting, however, was lost.  

Enter Liz Goldstein.  She came from a broken family and lived part time her mother until her death.  Then she moved to Los Angeles to live with her father.  Hanging in his elaborate home was the Soutine.  One night, when Liz’s father was out of town, the teenage Liz decided to take advantage of his absence and threw a wild party in his house.  Come morning, the Soutine was missing.  Liz held herself personally responsible for this loss.

Liz grew up and was living in New York when she learned her father had passed away. She returned to Los Angeles for the funeral, where she met Rose.  Rose was an acquaintance of Liz’s father.  They became friends over the lost Soutine, which each had lost in their own way.  Liz decided to reopen the case of the lost painting and promised to help Rose get restitution for the loss.

The lost painting causes both Rose and Liz to feel guilt over the lost painting and reminisce about their dead parents.  Is there a mystery over the second theft of the painting?

The book started out strong, but lost steam mid-way.  I wanted to know more about Rose’s life after arriving in England. We learn that she and her brother are separated, and get the feeling that she didn’t fit into her new family very well.  This wasn’t well developed, however, and later in the book, we learn that her adopted family took pains to see that she was well educated.  Liz’s relationship with Max, her father’s former business partner fell flat.

This was a quick read, but ultimately, I was left unsatisfied.

Read: September 8, 2018

3 Stars