What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

If you feel, hit your head, and were knocked unconscious then woke up and you had forgot the last ten years, what kind of person would you be? Would you be different? What if the current you was harder and not as nice, more jaded and so now you were feeling like your younger self and had back your old feeling, perspective, and optimism, would it change the life choices you had been making before the bump on your head?

That is what happens to Alice. When she wakes up she doesn't remember anything that has happened in the past 10 years, including the birth of her three children and the crumbling of her marriage. She doesn't much like the older her and feels like the 29 year old she last remembers being. Imagine looking at your husband and loving him like crazy but being apart for something you don't remember. Imagine seeing your three children and having no memories of them at all.

What I loved most about this story was that it addressed an interesting question, what a good relationship looks like and how it grows and changes over the years. Not just the couple relationship but with our friends, siblings, children, and parents. How much are shared memories, a history that doesn't require many words to access worth in the forming and maintaining of a relationship?

This was a beautiful story of love and loss and healing.

I really enjoyed the story and the writing style so I think I will try out more books by Moriarty.

(Finished February 14, 2016)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Why would anyone willingly pick up a book written by a man dying from terminal cancer? Because it isn't a book about dying, it is a book about trying to figure out what it means to live.

Paul wanted to understand the link between life, the mind, and medicine. He wanted to know what link between life and the physical brain existed so he went into medical school and trained and became a very talented, compassionate, much loved, neurosurgeon.

He was young, full of life, talented, and had a pretty great life when he found out he had terminal cancer. But that didn't end his life, it just changed the path and shortened it. In the relatively small number of pages Paul will move you, make you laugh, make you think, and then his wife will make you sob in her epilogue.

Paul and Lucy make themselves open and vulnerable to share their life and pain. Paul will tell you about how he learns that you are dying from the day you are born and it is how you fill the days in between that matter and he will do it in such a way that you will feel like you know him by the end.

Please read their words.

(Finished February 11, 2016)

Room by Emma Donoghue

My friend Lori recommended this book to me back in 2010 but I was a little afraid of it. I wasn't sure what to expect but I had a basic idea of the premise, a young woman held captive in a single room where she has the baby of her captor and spends years there. I was worried it would be a painful read and so I put it off.
Now it is a movie with Oscar buzz and I plan on seeing it at some point but I wanted to read the book first before I had the movie version in my head. And I am so glad I did.

While yes Ma (she has a name and while it is alluded to it is never told) and Jack live in a room where she has been for 7 years and he for his entire 5 years it isn't the part that stays with you by the end of the story.

The real point of the story starts to take shape after they get out of the room. Ma needs to learn who she is and help Jack find his place in a world he didn't know existed as she tries to cope and heal with the trauma she has endured.

The other characters feel real and you can, even as you feel frustrated by them, feel how difficult this all is for them. Ma's mother just wants Jack to be a normal kid and Ma's father wants Jack to never have been born and can't even look at him. Jack's Steppa (step-grandfather) ends up being one of my favorite characters in the story.

Life is for living even under the worst of circumstances and fear can be overcome, that is the message or point of this moving, and yes at times painful, story.

(Finished February 8, 2016)

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Told through the eyes of a little boy on his own during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw Milkweed is powerful and painful.

Misha was given his name because he doesn't know who he is or where he came from. He just knows he is fast and good at stealing bread. When he first sees them he wants a pair of shiny black boots like the men in the parade. He doesn't understand the gravity of the world he is living in. And through his eyes we see his world and with our knowledge of history we know what is going on and it makes the story that much more heartbreaking.

Milkweed is the story of a life warped and damaged and how the love of a little girl both then and now makes living possible.

I need to thank my friend Trisha for sharing this one with me.

(Finished February 5, 2016)