Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Smash’s End is Near

I wouldn’t say that I was shocked when I learned that NBC had cancelled Smash, with the show moved from its Tuesday night slot mid-season to Saturday (who watches shows on Saturdays unless they’re trying to catch up?) I knew it was only a matter of time, but when the official statement came out, I was a bit sad.

I have to admit, the show has seen better days.  I, myself was forgetting to tune in on the days that it was on and having to catch it on demand.  For a show that I’m supposed to love, wouldn’t I remember to turn it on?  Apparently not.  I’ve read reviews on the series as a whole, and they kept mentioning one huge thing that had changed between the first and second season: the writers.  After the first season didn’t get the ratings that NBC thought it would, they hired a new team of writers who were supposed to bring Smash out of its slump.  New characters were brought in, focal points were changed, multiple plays were going on at the same time rather than just the one, and then there were the guest stars.  While the first season had multiple stars like Nick Jonas, Uma Thurman and Bernadette Peters – who also made appearances in season two – even more stars were brought in this year including Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Hudson, Sean Hayes (Will & Grace reunion?), etc.  Even original Rent cast members Jessie L Martin and Daphne Rubin-Vega were brought in, but I have to admit, I’ve been disappointed that neither one has sang.  Crossing fingers that they will in the finale, otherwise I will not be happy.  Debra Messing even picked up the microphone in the penultimate episode, how can they not sing?!

One story line that the writers seemed to love, but highly irritated me was of Karen and Jimmy – the up-and-coming actress and the drug-addicted song writer.  In the first season I liked Karen, she had an amazing voice, she had a life outside of Broadway, and she did not sleep with the director (Derek) to get the part of Marilyn.  During the finale, a distraught Karen looked at Derek from her hiding spot behind a row of costumes after she found out that her fiancé cheated on her and I felt for her.  This season, she became increasingly annoying and infatuated with Jimmy, thinking that she could “change” him (haven’t we all thought that we could do that only to end up hollow?) and it became an obsession, she was a tiny shell of herself.  There seemed to be some chemistry between Karen and Derek, which would have been a good storyline, but the writers never fleshed that out sadly.

So what’s in store for the series finale airing this Sunday in the middle of Memorial Day weekend (great timing I must say)?  It’s the Tonys, and Karen and Ivy will probably be up for the same award, and Ivy is pregnant, probably by Derek since I don’t think that she’s dated anyone else all season.  All in all, despite my feelings of Smash this season, when the final credits roll, I’ll be sad that it won’t be coming back.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Luhrmann’s Gatsby

Last Friday, Gatsby opened to mixed reviews, and I was there, 3-D glasses in hand, standing on an enormous line.  It was a good thing that I had purchased my tickets in advance, because when I got to the movie theater, I saw that the show-time that I had selected was the only one that was sold out.  Let me just say that I’ve never seen a movie on opening night before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I knew it would be crowded, but I did not know that it would be insane.  Yes, I knew there was Gatsby-fever (after all, I had it for the past three years), but it was unlike anything I’d seen before.  The line went pretty quickly once it started moving, but it felt like a mad-dash to find a good seat; hoards of people clumped together and coats were strewn about, appearing out of nowhere as the temperature had been near eighty all day.  Thankfully, they opened the balcony level, and I sprinted up the stairs to the perfect seats.

The previews felt like they would go on forever, but finally, the lights dimmed.  I put on my 3-D glasses and settled in.  Why Gatsby in 3-D, you ask?  Because it was the only version playing at that theater.  Two and a half hours later, I emerged into the night in desperate need of a drink; there was so much alcohol being passed around throughout the film that it made me want one.  I ended up having a few martinis, then headed home to Billy, who had not accompanied me on my Gatsby adventure (girls’ night out!) but he will in a few weeks when I drag him to see it (yes I am going again).  In the meantime, we’re both going to read Fitzgerald’s masterpiece…I have already finished it, so I will be passing it along to Billy this weekend.

Clearly, I loved the movie, otherwise I would not be planning to go again, nor would I be planning on purchasing it when it comes out.  Going in, I was a little nervous for several reasons.  One, of course being that, well, it was a Baz Luhrmann creation, and as you already know, he is pretty over-the-top in all of his films (think Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, etc).  I decided to do a little google-ing on him a while back and found out that before he started directing films, he did operas.  I went to see Puccini’s Turandot at the Met once.  It was around three and a half hours long, and I remember being fascinated with the costumes and stage designs, because they were so elaborate (explains Luhrmann’s penchant for the dramatics).  I liked it a lot and resigned myself to go to more operas, but sadly, I have not been back since.  Surprisingly, I didn’t really find the movie to be over the top, with the exception of a blow-up giraffe (did they have such a thing in the 20s?).  There were scenes that were very extravagant – for example, Gatsby’s parties, Nick’s night in town with Tom (they call NYC going to town) – but there is extravagance in the book, it was the 1920s after all, the decade to indulge.  Gatsby’s parties were lavish, end of discussion; he wanted to show off everything that he had worked for; it was all for Daisy.  Of course, the parties stopped after she attended one and did not care for it.  As for Nick’s night on the town with Tom, well, it wasn’t as extravagant as portrayed in the film version, but they did drink a lot.

Another reason why I was nervous going in, was because Jay-Z had done the soundtrack.  The New York Times published an interview with Luhrmann the week before Gatsby was released, and in it he explains his decision for this, saying that hip-hop is to us what jazz was to the 20s.  Luhrmann was trying to make it fit with todays’ world, and I understand that, but I know I’m not alone when I say that it was perhaps not the best choice on his part.  Gatsby, by all intensive purposes, is a period film, but the soundtrack doesn’t quite fit; it’s too modern.  I’m sure there could have been a way to appeal to this generation without it, after all, Gatsby is read is schools for the most part – so there’s an audience there – and for the people who haven’t read it, the movie was promoted an awful lot and DiCaprio has a huge fan base.  I’m sure it still would still have been great even if the soundtrack was a little softer.

Speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio, he did a fabulous job as Gatsby, but I never had any doubt about it.  He was able to bring a little life into the character that is Jay Gatsby, but also change with him as well.  In the novel, Gatsby goes through a ton of emotions, and as he does this, his character kind of changes as well.  We see Gatsby as: optimistic, timid, scared, happy, in-love, disappointed and broken hearted.  All of that encompasses who Jay Gatsby is, and DiCaprio does a great job portraying it.  Equally well, I though, was Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway.  I’m not familiar with Mulligan’s work, but I felt that her Daisy was perfect.  She brought to life the carefree and often careless attitude that was the character of Daisy.  She loved Gatsby, but she loved her life more.  I adore Tobey as Nick, I feel like he was very good at telling the story, because, after all, that is what Nick does in the novel, he narrates.  I loved the scenes with Gatsby and Nick, I feel like since DiCaprio and Tobey are such great friends in real life, they have amazing chemistry together and that shows up on the film.  The scenes with Gatsby and Daisy were good also; you saw the love that they had for each other, but you also saw the distance that was between them.

All in all, Gatsby was amazing and a MUST SEE for everyone.  I leave you with a quote from the novel.

“As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.  He had come a long was to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Sarah Pekkanen’s Skipping a Beat

Have you ever reread the last few chapters of a book mere hours after having finished it because the flood of emotions that it left you with was so great that you needed to experience them again because you just weren’t ready to let go?  That is exactly what I did the last week after I finished Sarah Pekkanen’s Skipping a Beat…and I cried both times.  I have to be honest, no matter how much a book affects me – and they do, I’m not one to shy away from laughing, smiling or crying whilst in the depths of one – it’s not often that I do this, in fact, it’s a rare occurrence.  So rare, that I cannot remember the last time I did it, although I do remember the first.

I’m not sure what grade I was in, but I know that I was pretty young.  For an English class, we had to read Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows.  Now, I thought it was one of those books that everyone has to read as a child, but I asked Billy about it last week and he hadn’t even heard of it.  It’s about a young boy named Billy (coincidence) who lives in the Ozarks.  He desperately wanted Redbone Coonhounds (dogs to hunt coons with him), but his parents were too poor to buy them for him.  One day, Billy sees an ad in the paper and resigns to earn the money himself.  It takes him two years, but he finally gets two of them, brother and sister pups which he names Old Dan and Little Ann.  Billy trains the pups to hunt and they go on hunting adventures together, until one day when they trap a mountain lion in a tree.  The mountain lion goes to attack Billy, but Old Dan saves him, though it results in his death.  A few days later, Little Ann, heartbroken, wanders to the mound where Old Dan is buried and dies as well.  I remember being so upset about this that I immediately started rereading the book from the beginning just up until Billy gets the dogs, so that they would be alive again.  I’m sure this may sound funny to some people, Melissa laughed at me when I told her about this, but to me it was very sad, and rereading part of it was absolutely necessary.

Skipping a Beat is about a husband and wife trying to re-find the love that they lost.  Julia and Michael seem to have the perfect life.  Julia owns a successful event-planning company and Michael is the president and founder of Drinkup – an enhanced water beverage that he concocted in the tiny kitchen of their first apartment – which is now worth billions.  They live in a mansion on the outskirts of DC, with his and her bathrooms, attend parties and give to charities.  But something is missing, something they haven’t had for a long time.  In high school, they were known as Mike and Julie, having started dating in their junior year and moved to DC together after they graduated.  They were so much in love and inseparable – they could talk for hours and never tire.  Michael had big dreams of ensuring that they would never be poor again, and succeeded, but is there such a thing as too much?

The novel opens up with Julia setting up an event and Michael having a heart attack.  He dies for just over four minutes, but it is in those little minutes that he makes the decision to change his/their life/lives.  Knowing that Julia couldn’t possibly understand, he asks her to give him three weeks, and she reluctantly agrees.  Throughout that time, Julia is mostly unaccepting and cold to Michael, and takes solace in the company of Isabelle, her best and only friend.  It is only towards the end of these three weeks (and the novel) that she finally lets Michael in.  But unfortunately, it’s too late.  In a chapter that broke my heart, Michael dies and a few chapters later my heart broke again when Julia finds out that he knew three weeks was all that he had left.  But then came the end and I dried my tears and smiled.  Of course, my eyes were blinded with tears once more when I set back to reread the final chapters, but it needed to be done.  Skipping a Beat has nothing in common with Where the Red Fern Grows, except my reaction towards it.  It moved me so much that I needed to read it again, needed to feel the same rollercoaster of emotions – had I read Where the Red Fern Grows now, I probably would have reread the end instead of the beginning.

Pekkanen’s characters are so real and alive, leaping off the pages and engraining themselves into your brain; you love and dislike her characters at the same time – just like in real life.  When they face despair, you cry, and when they find that silver lining, you smile.  Skipping a Beat tugs at your heart.  It shows you that you can find love again once it is lost, but you have to be willing to make the effort because it won’t be easy.  Love, once lost, is hard to regain, but not impossible.  At the core of this novel, that is the message that Pekkanen is sending.  Don’t put things off.  Carpe Diem!  But also, pick up a copy of this book and read it…it really is amazing.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

HIMYM – The Mother of all Episodes

I consider myself to be a fan of the show How I Met Your Mother.  Despite not having seen the entirety of the past few seasons due to never being home on Monday evenings and being probably the only person in the world who does not have a DVR, I do own five seasons on DVD.  I have always thought, like everyone, that we would not get to meet the mother until the series finale and, after reading a partial interview in Entertainment Weekly (the full story will be out this Friday) with the show’s creators this morning, I realized that that indeed was the plan – until the show was renewed for a ninth and final season that is.  The creators – Carter Bays and Craig Thomas – decided to shake things up and give us what we’ve all been waiting for: the mother.  In a way, it was genius because no one was expecting it – no one except me. 

Sunday evening, as I was watching tv with Billy (yes, it was the Survivor finale, but no I didn’t watch most of it, I had been catching up on Smash and came out at the end) there was a commercial for How I Met Your Mother.  It promised a reveal and that it should not be missed.  There wasn’t any more info given, but something struck me.  I turned towards Billy and said “What if we meet the mother?”  He said that he didn’t that they would do that because it was not the premise of the show.  I became convinced that they would, making a mental note to tune in and see for myself.

Flash forward to last night.  I laughed while Robin and Barney used a familiar move (the engagement ring in the champagne) to break-up an irritating couple, only later to learn that it brought them together.  My eyes widened when I found out that Lilly and Marshall were moving to Italy (they can’t move!), but was happy to learn that Marshall received a job offer to be a Judge (did we know he would end up as a judge?  I didn’t) and they would be staying.  The biggest shock – or so I thought – was that Ted was moving to Chicago because he was heartbroken over Robin and Barney’s wedding.  I thought that Lilly would have told the gang or tried to stop him, but she didn’t.  At the end of the episode, she helps Ted with his luggage.  Ted says that he needs to leave Sunday night and Lilly asks how he’s going to get back to the city.  Ted says he’ll have to take the train.  The hairs on my arms stood up and I knew.

In the next scene we see a pair of woman’s legs and the bottom of a guitar case.  The legs are walking but stop for an instant, revealing the bottom of an umbrella.  A yellow umbrella.  The umbrella that we all know to be the mother’s.  We see the legs moving again and I held my breath.  Then, we see her at a ticket window.  “One ticket to Far Hampton, please,” she says.  This is the mother.  Ted will never move to Chicago because he’ll meet her on his way back from Far Hampton – and, as we know, he doesn’t wait three days to call her, he calls her right away. 

I was speechless, but inside I was screaming “Yes! Finally!”  Then I called my boyfriend and practically shouted into the phone.  He didn’t seem that excited about it, but I certainly was.  I have been waiting eight years for this moment and it was better than anything I could have imagined.  I will spend the summer catching up on (purchasing) the seasons that I have not seen completely, as I anxiously await what I feel will be the best season ever.  The secret is out and the series may almost be over, but the story has only just begun.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419 · 1 Comment

Tana French – In the Woods and the as Yet Unwritten Sequel

As my Tuesday evening class comes to a close, and my final project/presentation is on the horizon (tonight), I wonder, what if.  What if my book idea for my project came true and Tana French wrote the book that her fans have been waiting for?  I know that it’s kind of a dorky wish, but I would be ecstatic!  I really would.  Haven’t you ever hoped beyond hope for one of your favorite authors to write the book you know everyone wants to read?  I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Tana French’s first book, In the Woods – which won several awards including: the Edgar Award, the Barry Award, the Macavity Award and the Anthony Award – tells the story of Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox, who work on the Dublin Murder Squad together.  They are assigned to a case involving the murder of a young girl whose body is found in the woods-turning-archaeological-dig on the outskirts of Knocknaree.  Twentyish years before that, three kids were playing in the same woods when two disappeared.  The “sole survivor” was found clinging to a tree with blood filled sneakers; that kid being none other than Rob Ryan.  He never regained his memory and his two friends were never found.  Oh, and also, no one knows that Rob is the kid from that case except for his family and his partner Cassie.  Could these two cases be related?

Throughout the novel, we become lost in French’s prose; she’s a fabulous writer, definitely in my top five, perhaps even top three.  We follow Rob and Cassie as they attempt to solve both mysteries – even a chilling (to me) scene where Rob decides to camp out in the woods overnight alone – alone with his thoughts, trying to bring the past to the foreground, and with the murderer for the current case still on the loose.

As I’ve said before, this book kept me up at night, even going insofar as giving my nightmares which culminated in my waking up screaming in the middle of the night and turning on all of the lights in my apartment.  But despite these things, I love her books.  Also, it should be said that I am a bit of a scared-y cat.  I jumped out of my seat several times in the theater when I went to see M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, resulting in my friend laughing at me and my renewing my vow to never watch horror movies.  I am aware that The Village is not actually all that scary, but I wanted to give you a sense of how easily I get scared.

Back to In the Woods.  The end of the book left more than a few readers disappointed and dissatisfied, myself included.  While the murder of the young girl is eventually solved, the other mystery, the one of the two kids, the one that intrigues us more, sadly, is not.  Tana has come out with three more books since then, but none of them have helped shed light on the mystery that I so desire to be solved.  Even my coworker, the one who introduced me to her work to begin with, refuses to pick up another one of her novels until the events to this mystery are brought to light. 

Enter my idea for her long awaited sequel and my project entitled, Back to the Woods.  In it, Tana would bring back her first two characters, Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox, who haven’t spoken in the five years since the last case that tore them apart.  Rob had all but given up on ever solving the mystery of his friends’ disappearance.  One day, he is going through boxes of stuff at his parents’ house, and he comes across a clue, something that had been overlooked for years.  Things start clicking in Rob’s brain and he starts having flashbacks of a childhood he had long since buried away.  Those flashbacks and that clue are what drive Rob to break the years’ long silence and contact Cassie.  After all, she was the one who had stood by him and supported him as he had tried to open up the past before.  This clue and those flashbacks could be the key to actually solving the disappearance and probable murder of his friends, the one that has been haunting him throughout his whole life.  It is the reason why he pushed Cassie and everyone else in his life away.  With the help of Cassie, Rob goes Back to the Woods in an attempt to answer long sought after questions and release him from the past.  The woods may have been destroyed, but that doesn’t mean that the answers aren’t there.  Rob has been living with them ever since, and maybe now he will have the courage to dig deep enough and let it all out.  But, in a twist to the story, because it wouldn’t be a Tana French novel without a few, Cassie is hiding something from Rob.  Could she have had the key all along?

 39794_470418759672_1546308_n[2] - Copy - Copy 

 Of course, that is only my idea.  As of now, this book doesn’t exist, but what if it did…wouldn’t that be nice?  I would run as fast as my feet could take me to the bookstore and pick up a copy.  Perhaps one day…

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Sarah Pekkanen’s The Opposite of Me

When I first picked up The Opposite of Me, I thought that the title was pretty straight forward.  After all, it’s about two twin sisters who are complete opposites.  Alex is thin, has red hair and turquoise eyes, and works as a model.  She is the epitome of beautiful.  She is engaged to an incredibly handsome and charming rich man who adores her.  And there’s Lindsey.  She has brown hair and brown eyes, and is about to be made VP at the advertising firm that she works at in New York, the smart sister…until everything blows up in her face and she finds herself jobless and moving back home to her parents’ house in Maryland.  Only, no one knows the real reason of why she is there.  Lindsey is embarrassed about the turn of events and also wants to remain “the smart sister” in her parents’ eyes.  So she lies, biding her time until she can get back on her feet.

As Lindsey desperately tries to start her career over, she begins to learn more about herself and realizes that there is life outside of work, and (gasp) outside of advertising.  One evening, Lindsey bestows an act of kindness onto a stranger and ends up not only making a friend, but being pointed into a whole new direction, one that she never would have considered.  She begins to question everything about her life and her relationships, or lack thereof.  This gives way to a string of events that will change both Lindsey and Alex’s lives forever, but it also brings them closer together. They kind of trade places, but is that really what happens, or is it actually the real way they were supposed to be all along.  In a way, it’s exactly what they both needed.  They were so focused on what they felt they needed to do with their lives, and what was expected of them, that they didn’t take the time out to think about what they themselves really wanted. 

The Opposite of Me isn’t a tale about two twin sisters that are completely opposite, and it isn’t about making the best of what life throws at you either.  It’s about Lindsey and Alex as individuals who learn that there is another side to themselves, that they are not necessarily what they have molded themselves out to be.  It’s about two sisters who, despite their differences, are actually more similar than they could have imagined. 

Pekkanen makes you realize just how precious life really is, that what you do with it is as important as the relationships that you make along the way.  But she also makes you question yourself as well.  She makes you want to look in the mirror and really think about who you are as a person, and if you are where you want to be.  Do you recognize the person staring back, or is there someone else entirely that you could be?  We all have different facets of ourselves, and as we grow as individuals certain things get pushed aside in order for other things to flourish, but maybe it’s those things that we neglect that would make us the happiest.  The Opposite of Me shows us that sometimes, it’s okay to change your life’s plan if that change will allow you to start living again.

I leave you with a quote to entice you to read this book.

 

“If we don’t fight it too hard – if we don’t cling to the person we used to be and instead let go of the paralyzing fear and turn into who we’re meant to be next – it’s easier.”

-Sarah Pekkanen, The Opposite of Me

Posted on by saraelizabeth419 · 1 Comment

Karin Tanabe’s The List

In The List, Karin Tanabe tells the story of Adrienne Brown, a woman who leaves her life in New York behind for the chance of a lifetime, a job at the Capitalist.  In New York, Adrienne wrote for the magazine Town & Country, she was given free designer clothes and accessories, and encouraged to hae a life outside of work, but something always seemed to be missing.  Politics.  She loved politics, which is why, when Adrienne got the offer to work at the Capitalist, based in Washington, DC, she didn’t hesitate.  The only thing she hesitates about is calling her parents and asking if she can move back home

As it turns out, working at the Capitalist, or the List as everyone calls it, isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  Adrienne is assigned to the Style section, which is about as low as you can get.  She gets zero respect from her coworkers.  They keep their heads down as they pass by and have private conversations in front of Adrienne and the other Style girls, as if they don’t exist.  Her job consists of chasing down celebrities at functions, trying to get quotes from them, or accidentally overhearing conversations and turning them into stories.  She has to get up at five in the morning, six days a week (her only day off is Saturday), and she’s expected to write at least ten stories a day.  If she takes even a second to breathe, her boss is down her throat about not being productive.  Where is the fun in that?

One restless night, Adrienne decides to take a drive and stumbles onto what could be the biggest story the Capitalist has ever had…involving one of their employees and a powerful person in office.  Adrienne becomes consumed with this, obsessive at times.  She even enlists the help of the one person in the world who you wouldn’t expect. 

The List, loosely based on Karin Tanabe’s experiences of working at Politico, is fast-paced and witty.  Author Sarah Pekkanen describes it as “The Devil Wears Prada meets Capitol Hill,” and I couldn’t agree more.  Adrienne thinks that working at the Capitalist is everything that she wanted, and in some ways it is.  She learns to write (and think) faster, but she never truly fits in.  She doesn’t dress the part of a reporter and she doesn’t completely think like one either.  She sits on the story for so long trying to put all of the pieces together to make it perfect, that she almost loses everything.  It is only after she is left in a motel room that Adrienne is able to gather all of her strength and finish the job.  But even then is a story ever truly finished?

Karin Tanabe has crafted a great story that will grip you until long after the novel ends.  A novel that is so gripping, that you can’t put it down, and one that you continue to think about weeks later, is the best that you can get.  It also makes you wonder to what extent the truth meets fiction.  It is, after all, based on the author’s own experiences.  How much of it is fact and how much of it is a figment of Tanabe’s own imagination?  The List is a must read for anyone who is looking to lose themselves in a story.  It only took my three days to read, which says a lot and I personally cannot wait for her next book.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Sarah Pekkanen’s The Best of Us

It had been a while since I had read and enjoyed a new (new to me) chick-lit author.  I had tried a few different ones, but none of them seemed to stack up.  Then, I was introduced to Sarah Pekkanen’s writing, and subsequently purchased all of her books.  One down, three more to read!  I’m excited!

In her fourth book, The Best of Us, Pekkanen explores the friendships of four college friends (three women and one man) who travel to Jamaica with their spouses on an all-expenses paid vacation to celebrate the birthday of one of their own. 

Tina is married and struggling a bit with the task of raising four young children.  Allie has just found out about a life-threatening illness that she may potentially end up with.  Savannah’s husband moved out, leaving her for a nurse who works in his hospital – information that she has not shared with anyone.  And then there’s Pauline, the wife of Dwight, who, in trying to make him happy, sets up the whole vacation for his birthday with his college friends.  Pauline is cold and uninviting, but as we get deeper into the story, we learn that there is much more depth to Pauline, and a secret that she has been hiding for all of her life with Dwight.

Among the reunion of old college friends, the hours spent both on the beach and in the villa, and the non-stop partying, there are darker forces working as well.  Secrets emerge (old and new) and each relationship (friendship and romantic) is tested.  There is jealousy, betrayal, love and everything in between that you could think of that would emerge when old friends get together.

I had previously read her e-short stories and was really looking forward to seeing how she handled the task of writing something bigger.  Given the number of main characters, I was a bit unsure if there would be enough depth to each of them to make them believable, but I was happy to find out that there was.  I really enjoyed this book.  It is a must read for anyone who likes chick lit, also for people who are fans of Emily Giffin, which I am as well (Pekkanen’s style has been compared to Giffin).  The Best of Us is a tale of old friends and what happens to those friendships when you grow up and live separate lives.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Great Gatsby Movie Coming Soon

Ever since I first read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I’ve been obsessed.  With its 1920s glamour and star-crossed lovers, who doesn’t love it?!  But really, it’s so much more than that.  Despite Daisy and Gatsby’s mutual love for each other, a love that endured years of separation, it is ultimately not enough.  Daisy is married to Tom and is not strong enough to leave him.  And Gatsby, despite everything, isn’t strong enough either, though he puts up a good façade; no one knows who he really is.  There’s also Nick, Daisy’s cousin, who befriends Gatsby, in awe of the fortune and lavish parties, wishing that he could be just like him.  But after Nick is thrown into Gatsby’s world and starts to see things behind the façade, he realizes that it’s not what he wants after all.

What I find most interesting of the novel is that there’s so much that is not said, so much that the reader has to think about and realize on their own.  It’s truly an amazing work of fiction that Fitzgerald didn’t get nearly enough praise for during his life.

I’ve been waiting for about three years for this film to come out, and thankfully, I have less than a month to go!  You can bet that I’ll thumb through the novel again beforehand so it’ll be fresh in my mind, and then, off to the theater I will go!  I leave you with a quote from The Great Gatsby…perhaps one of my favorites.

 

“He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly.  It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Karen Brown’s The Longings of Wayward Girls

This past weekend, I finished reading Karen Brown’s The Longings of Wayward Girls.  It’s being published on July 2nd (as of now) by Washington Square Press, and I was lucky enough to snag an Advanced Reader’s Copy from my instructor, who happens to be kind of a big deal over at Atria Books, of which Washington Square Press is an imprint (she is the president/founder).  It took me a little while to get into it, but when I finally did, I couldn’t put it down.  The story revolves around the main character Sadie, taking on the perspectives of her both as an adult and an adolescent, with the promise that there is something dark looming over adult-Sadie from her past. 

As an adolescent, Sadie grows up in a small community (the same one that she settles into as a wife and mother).  Her mother is an actress with lots of expensive clothes, some of which have been forgotten and live in the basement, used by Sadie and her friends in their child games.  They play house, turning the basement into another world, and walk outside in the woods – of which they are forbidden to go – dragging the hems of the dresses in the leaves and dirt, and sometimes in the water by the pond.  A few years prior, a young girl had walked through the woods on her way home from playing at a friend’s house and disappeared, never to be found; a girl who looked like Sadie’s identical twin, if she had had one.  The missing girl becomes a backdrop throughout her childhood and young adult life, as Sadie is constantly being mistaken for her.

As an adult, Sadie is mother to two children (a boy and a girl), and has just lost a third (stillborn).  Most of the novel takes place during the summer, where Sadie and other mothers in the town spend the days lounging by a pond, however, at the beginning Sadie is left at home with the empty nursery while her husband is at work and her kids are at school.  Sadie unexpectedly runs into a childhood crush and, against her better judgment starts an affair with him that, not only could change the course of her entire life, but also sheds light on events from her past, including a secret that she had long since thought she had buried.

The Longings of Wayward Girls can be viewed as a coming of age story, where innocence is not only lost once, but twice.  The first time it happens is when Sadie is young, as when it happens with all of us, then again when Sadie is an adult finding out about things from the past, things that will forever change her views and opinions of people she had grown up with.  I think that the way Brown tells the story, by alternating adult-Sadie with the adolescent one, the reader gets to know the character on a much deeper level than the “norm,” seeing Sadie’s childhood behavior carried on into her adult life, how some things haven’t changed, but also seeing how the character has ultimately grown. 

I must admit, I was a bit skeptical at first as to the looming darkness that the novel promises, but with its unexpected twists and revelations, Brown delivers.  I promise you will not be disappointed.  There is much more to this story then I have let on, but with the publication date still months away, I couldn’t spoil it for you, could I?