I have a special fondness for memoirs, especially those written by women, so I was happy to read and review Flesh and Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life, by N. West Moss. Flesh and Blood is a perfect title for this memoir, a conclusion the reader will probably come to easily after reading the Prologue and first few pages of this book. Ms. Moss refers to "flesh and blood" in the dedication as well:
   
   For my mother
   and her mother
   and her mother
   and her mother

With great fondness she remembers her own Grandmother Hastings, in particular, early on in the book, and again frequently throughout. And since the book is mainly about her experience with an illness which many flesh and blood women can easily relate to (an illness involving flesh and lots of bleeding), an illness which will eventually deprive her of the ability to have grandchildren of her own, the "flesh and blood" of the title are meant to be interpreted literally as well.

I did enjoy this book over all, with its occasional bits of laugh-out-loud humor: alluding to the anesthesiologist and the anesthesia The author quotes, "'Imagine this is a Bombay Sapphire, then,' bless his fucking heart. No kidding, even though I prefer Hendrick's." I also loved her descriptions of her husband, who is all a husband should be, and was entertained by the antics of the praying mantis that lived in her room with her during her recovery.

I give this book four stars, however, instead of the perfect five, possibly because of the off-putting copious amounts of blood Moss describes, although I am not entirely sure that that is why i deducted a point. Still, I would recommend the book to a friend and read this author again. I also think Flesh and Blood would make for an interesting discussion in a women's book club.

I am not the intended audience for this book.

In its favor, I have to say that it is a fairly quick read and the plot moves forward without too much effort on the reader’s part, except for keeping the generations clear in one’s mind. The story is interesting enough as a mystery. There will be those who find its prose poetic and its wisdom folksy and clever. Readers who liked One Thousand White Women and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will probably be fans of this novel as well.

To me it reads like a parody of the western romance/mystery genre, with quite a bit of the supernatural thrown in. The writing is over the top with flowery metaphors and on each page there are several sentences of this sort: “As she approached the city limits, she made sure all her windows were up, her locks on. But the shadows crawled in the pickup with her anyway, took a seat and sat there staring at her with accusing eyes.” “But she was counting on the Sam Donovan she’d once served with and admired, the man tough enough to shoot you if he had to, but wise enough to understand that the best men didn’t have to use force and guns. The best men had other weapons--honor and true courage and decency.”

The author tries too hard to be clever and comes off sounding like a collection of bumper sticker quotations, or a list of the kinds of sayings Paul Harvey used to end his shows. (“Sometimes the past could press so hard you might never be able to rise.” “Death inspired easy confessions. Life-changing events brought out hasty resolutions.”) People who like Paul Harvey might enjoy reading this book.

This is a true account of the author's year in Syria, spanning from September of 2004 to September of 2005. We find out from the outset that Stephanie Saldana is departing the US just as a relationship is ending, leaving her with a broken heart. She has been granted a Fulbright fellowship, and her goal is to study the role of Jesus in the religion of Islam. After seeing a YouTube promo on the book -- and because of Ms. Saldana's youth -- I was expecting something callow, maybe half-baked, a breathless, "oh I've lost the love of my life" sort of prose. What I found instead was maturity and a very well-written saga of wounding love, a "cursed" family history, and a struggle for faith in the very cradle of at least three of the major religious beliefs of the world. Ms. Saldana's descriptions of the local people she meets are worth the price of the book by themselves. She has done a really fine job of helping me to picture what her year abroad in Syria must have been like -- from details of the streets of Damascus, including all the local color anyone could ask for, to the hair-raising political developments (she was in Syria at a time when our ambassador has left there in protest of the assassination of Lebanon's Hariri) and all the way to the surprising discovery of love in a monastery in the desert. This really is a fascinating read and the author makes the reader care about her and those wonderful people she meets. Rather than coming across as overly dramatic, Ms. Saldana's analysis of her personal situation, which she describes as an early mid-life crisis, is supported by the explanation of her background, including time abroad all over the world, working as a journalist. The author's undergraduate degree in poetry is evident in her choice of words and in the images and analogies she creates to express herself. The Bread of Angels leaves the reader in awe of this young lady's talents and gumption.

This book is for the discriminating reader who enjoys exquisitely written, softly beautiful prose, and who does not require an action-packed plot to appreciate a book. The subject is not upbeat, and yet the reader has a sense of sober satisfaction at the end, somehow. What transpires in the novel appeals almost entirely to one's intellect, but the story and the story within the story are emotionally rich as well. This was one of my top five reads for last year, and makes my top thirty or forty life-time favorites as well. I found this gem while sorting through used books for a library fund raiser and consider it a lucky find, a rare treasure.

This true story of a mid-18th century English heiress duped into a marriage with an abusive, masochistic, fortune-hunting monster is jaw-droppingly fascinating. The period details are instructive and the laws regarding women's rights are enlightening, especially in this day of concern over rights for women in the Middle East. The book is impressively researched and foot-noted, and includes, on a large scale, engrossing information concerning the British society of the day, while examining, on a more intimate scale, the minutia of the daily life of one citizen. It is interesting to note what was transpiring across the sea even as England and the colonies engaged in war. Mary Eleanor Bowes is an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, so there is a connection between this woman's history and the history of modern England as well. The biography of Lady Strathmore and her two marriages contains every element to titillate and engage the reader -- from juicy marital "confessions" of wrong-doing to international kidnapping and fugitive chases. Wedlock reads like the non-fiction it is, but the style, I feel, merely enhances the veracity of the subject. I give this book five out of five stars.

Over all I found Asha Bandele’s Something Like Beautiful to be an engrossing story. I liked reading about what happened to her, and how these events made her feel; I sympathized 98% with the author, even as I wished she had made other choices; and I loved meeting her precious, precocious daughter. The message was uplifting as the book ended, and I can imagine this work will be a boon to other single parents, especially women.

Although the author never made the point in so many words that children of single parents are often, of necessity, more mature than other kids of their ages, I do believe this to be true. The relationship this mother and daughter have is truly a beautiful thing, and I think Bandele fails to give herself enough credit for this fact. On the other hand, one wonders about down the road, how difficult it may be for them to separate in the normal, healthy way of all kids and their mothers. It’s a poignant fact of life for just such families that growing up to be independent may be more problematic for children like Bandele’s daughter and for the parents, also, that cleaving may be particularly painful. In other words, I believe this book is an important sociological portrait, given the prevalence of single mothers.

I have only one reservation about Something Like Beautiful, which may not even be fair, considering that the book I read was not the final edition. And this is that, despite the fact that Bandele has won awards as an author, I found her language to be vague and/or ambiguous in numerous places. I am not talking about typos or repetitions of words, or misspellings. Instead I found pronouns whose antecedents were not clear, or sentences such as the following, which I found by opening the book at random: “ ... we revealed ourselves to ourselves wholly ...” rather than “... we revealed ourselves to each other wholly ...” and instead of “After five years ... we did what most people who are in love are want -- and able -- to do,” I certainly hope she meant to say “are wont ... to do.” OK, the latter may have been an editorial error, but there were many, many sentences that I had to read several times in order to find the meaning in them. Here’s an example of an awkward sentence (the last one): “You can still make it out,... but you have to squint. And even then, blurs.” Does she mean, “And even then it blurs” or “And even then, you see a blur”? Sometimes I chalked up the ambiguity to her being a poet, but I usually enjoy reading the prose of poets, so maybe it’s just that the work is still in need of a firm editorial hand. (I suppose that editing one’s own writing is different from editing that of another, since the author has also worked as an editor.)

Despite the foregoing paragraph, I found Something Like Beautiful, by Asha Bandele, to be well worth the reading.

I like this book, but it seems more of a short story than a novel: a story which has been stretched out to novel-length, as opposed to an actual novel with the complexities of characters and various story lines which the term novel tends to connote. Since I love short stories, this was not a complete turn-off; the book has a leisurely pace and treats themes which warrant contemplation, the author has a pleasing turn of phrase and the subject matter will appeal to contemporary women - perhaps urban women especially, but not solely. Still, I feel as if I have just eaten a light, tasty meal when I was expecting fare of at least three courses.