Jackie's April Picks!

Here are some recommendations for books coming out this month:

Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife by Nava Atlas

This little book, done up in 1950's cookbook style, is hilarious. It includes recipes such as "Control Freak Cookies", "Bean and Weenies of Sexual Tension" and "Hypercritical Cinnamon Rolls" among many others, with instructions to let things marinate with lost dreams and repressed rage, or offers the option to spice with cinnamon or cyanide, cook's choice. There are a few happy recipes in there too (her editor made her add them), but this is truly just a giggle for those of us whose rose colored glasses got lost a long time ago, about the same time as our tired souls turned a deep shade of jade.

The Household Guide To Dying by Debra Adelaide

Don't let the title fool you, or at least read the whole title, which continues: "a novel about life". Because that's certainly what it is. The main character, Delia, is an advice columnist for domestic stuff, as well as a writer of several books based on a modern and cheeky interpretation of the 1861 classic "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management". She also happens to be a mother with a loving husband, two young daughters, and end-stage cancer. She figures that her final book should be, in fact, how to manage a household dealing with death. She's flippant, upbeat, well read and extremely funny while dealing with enormous issues head-on (mostly) and unflinchingly. The book moves around in time a bit, back and forth between 17-year-old Delia who was making her way in the world as an unwed teenage mother in a small town and the current organized, irreverent, dying-in-as-practical-way-as-she-can Delia. The scope and generosity of her story is difficult to pull away from--there are quiet insights throughout the book that sneak up on you in unexpected ways but hit you like a hammer. It's a charming and ultimately hopeful story that I sincerely gets a lot of attention--it deserves it.


Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton

Jane Hamilton, author of the emotionally wrenching "A Map of the World" and "The Book of Ruth", is trying her hand at humor this spring in this tale of two marriages and four profoundly disassociated people.

Laura and Charlie Rider are childless and the proprietors of a grand and successful plant nursery where Laura does the designs and Charlie does the hard work (including the quiet work of fixing Laura's designs). Laura is bold, bright, ambitious, completely self centered and just as completely uninterested in Charlie anymore. Charlie is an immature, simple, pleasant guy who prides himself mostly for being great in bed despite most of the town being convinced he's gay. They run the business together and make up stories about their 4 cats to give them something to talk about with each other.

Jenna Faroli is the town celebrity, hosting a syndicated radio talk show that brings in all the stars, hot authors and politicos. She is married to Frank who is a judge, Rhodes Scholar and budding amateur chef 15 years her senior and still in love with his college sweetheart who married his best friend. Jenna and Frank's marriage has been basically passionless since the complicated birth of their daughter 20-some years ago (an emotionally troubled and clingy young woman prone to multiple frantic calls to her mother every day). Theirs is a marriage of intellects more than anything.

Things change when Charlie and Jenna meet by accident just about the time that Laura decides that she wants to write romance novels. Trying to figure out a plot, she begins to experiment on Charlie and Jenna, with Charlie's knowledge, establishing an email relationship between the two (that she partially ghost writes) until an actual affair begins. That's when things begin to get out of control for everybody.

This is a darkly hilarious novel that I would categorized as "suburban Machiavellian chic lit with a slight literary twist". It's also an extremely quick read--I knocked it out in a matter of a few hours. While it doesn't resonate like Hamilton's previous work, it's definitely worth the read for it's creativity and wicked humor.


Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern

Ahern , queen of the "soul mates will find each other" chic lit fairy tales, has another winner on her hands. There's always a bit of magic involved in her tales, but this one has the biggest dose yet. Protagonist Joyce takes a tumble down some stairs, losing her baby (and ultimately her marriage) and needing a blood transfusion. While still in the hospital, she discovers she has all sorts of new knowledge-- architectural , artistic, historic, a grasp of languages--that she had no actual way of having gained. And then the memory flashes begin--of a woman on a picnic blanket, a tow headed little girl she's never met, and a life she has never lived. She's getting intimate glimpses of someone else's past, and she becomes obsessed with figuring out whose. A couple of chance meetings with a tall man set sparks flying and the comedic dance of trying to get two strangers who are meant to be together ACTUALLY together begins. It's a fun, light read coming out just in time for Spring Break.