I haven't read the author's previous books, but it's not hard to guess her primary focus. Here's four other titles listed in this book: Motherless Daughters, Letters from Motherless Daughters, Mother of My Mother, Motherless Mothers.

It comes as no surprise that Edelman comes across as a wee bit obsessive and humorless in this memoir. Her then only daughter, Maya, is three, and seems to be having her terrible twos late; and her husband is working many overtime hours. Maya's tantrums and her imaginary "friend", Dodo, prove to be more than her mother can cope with. Despite re-assurance from the child's pediatrician, seconded by a family friend/therapist, that Maya's behavior is normal, that she'll outgrow it, Edelman and her husband shlep her down Belize, hoping to take her to a healer, while having a family holiday.

Yeah, great idea, you're thinking, especially since she's running a fever, coughing, and Edelman's booked a passage on a marginal third world airline. Don't worry, you won't miss a single beat of this trip, it's so slow, you'll feel like it's happening in real time. By page 200, we'd only gotten to day five of the trip. It's not just that every whine and whimper of the child is described, Edelman tries to provide a little history of the Maya, but it's just not that interesting--it feels like she's filling in the space.

It's hard to care that much about this family. The reader doesn't dislike them, just wants them to relax--come on, it's hardly a serious, life threatening illness we're dealing with here. It seems that Edelman copes with Maya's misbehavior by standing back in awe while she quietly falls apart inside. How about a little discipline here? And she seems to be over-reacting to the imaginary friend. As my mother would say, she won't be bringing him to college.

I would not recommend this book. There are better parenting memoirs, better travel writing, and better books that combine the two.

Bowden writes in a spare style, perhaps reflecting the time he spent as a newspaper reporter for the Tucson Citizen. In several pieces he skips place or personal names altogether--in a life as painful as the one he describes, with nary a dysfunction left out of his childhood and later life, this might be essential to survival. Abandonment, alcoholism, drug abuse, gun play, whoring...this isn't a book to recommend to just anyone.

Yet, it's not despairing--he cares greatly for the natural world around him, and his awe-filled observations of animal behavior and biology are fascinating. It's a little too much William S. Burroughs, and not enough Bruce Chatwin for my taste, but the writing is vivid and compelling.

When I dive into a novel, I want to be enveloped in its world, every sense engaged. I want the author to lead me by the hand, whispering into my ear. If this is you, too, you'll like The Crow Road by Iain Banks. Many and varied characters, connected in different ways over the years, a passionate main character coming of age in contemporary Scotland, just different enough from the American experience to be intriguing but not unfamiliar. Banks also writes science fiction, as Iain M. Banks, and there is a little touch of fancy, or magical realism in this novel, too. It's a little late for a beach read, but perfect to curl up with by the fire this winter.

I like reading popular science books, be they light, Mary Roach ("Stiff"), funny, Bill Bryson ("A Short History of Nearly Everything") or more challenging, Oliver Sacks ("Uncle Tungsten"). I expected this to be on the lighter side, a la Mary Roach, with the author candidly relating her own experiences. Unfortunately, she's not as engaging a writer, and I found myself bored by her scientific descriptions. Somewhere in the middle of the book the brain scans and MRI's she'd had started to seem repetitive, and it felt like the book wasn't going anywhere. Too bad. Maybe she needed something, a central event, to anchor the book. Disappointing.

One of reviewers cites a reference on Wikipedia to a book by Dave Pelzer's brother, Stephen, entitled "Dysfunction for Dollars". There is no such book. "Dysfunction for Dollars" is an article by Pat Jordan in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, July 28, 2002.

Like his earlier short story collection, this will draw you deep inside a world that is both new and familiar. I have recommended this book to many people, and each came away saying "Wow". It reminds me of "Life of Pi", not in its themes or characterizations, but in the way it deeply affects the reader. I think this would be a good book club pick, because there are so many facets in the book, so many directions in which the discussion could go. There are many characters in the novel, and none are given short shrift, all are fully realized, intriguing people. Amazing.

Evening is The Whole Day takes place almost entirely inside of one house, and yet it feels like it contains a whole world. As the story begins, the household is in turmoil. We know something terrible has happened, but exactly what took place is unclear. Samarasan takes us deep inside of many characters, and back in time, until we can see the whole, inevitable conclusion. Although the setting was far away and long ago - Malaysia in the 1970's - the family dramas, the generational conflicts, the societal differences, felt universal. Absorbing and compelling, the language was so vivid, so sharp, that I didn't mind the slow pace of the action. A masterful first novel.

The movie is scheduled to come out in 2009. Although there were many aspects of the book that I liked--her description of the afterlife, and of the disintegration of a family beset by tragedy--there were many times I found myself murmuring, "Stop, stop, enough. Where's the editor?" I don't want to reveal to reveal too much in case you haven't read it, but the much of the last third of the book could be eliminated to good advantage. I have great hopes that Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings movies, can tighten up the story line.

I recommend "Lucky", also by Alice Sebold. It is her memoir of the rape, and consequent trial she experienced as a young woman. In "The Lovely Bones" I felt the author was just telling us what we want to hear, that Grampa will be waiting for us on the other shore, that justice will out, that our wounds will heal, etc.