What I’m Reading Now: The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds

This one is very good and I can’t wait to finish it. It’s about a young girl growing up in a staunchly religious, Christian family. Her grandpa starts his own church and publicly shames those in the faith that he disagrees with. He gets up and gives sermons in which he calls out even his own family members. It’s cringey and abusive. Women in the church are gaslit and told that they must be at fault if they miscarry a baby, and don’t even think about committing formication in this church. The book was first published in 1995, but I think it’s a very important book to read right now in light f everything going on with abortion rights and all the scandals surrounding abuse in churches.

May 30, 2022 0

What I’m Reading Now: Darling Rose Gold

I started Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel last night on my Audible app. So far so good. It’s told in first-person from two narrators. One narrator is a mother named Patty convicted of child abuse via Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy. The other narrator is the daughter, Rose Gold, who testifies to put her mother Patty behind bars. The book begins with Patty’s release from prison and–surprise, surprise–it’s Rose Gold who shows up to pick up Patty and take her home. They share the house where Patty grew up, which Rose Gold has recently bought, unbeknownst to Patty and also to Patty’s horror.

The story moves back in time to show how Rose Gold’s illnesses began and how Patty “took care” of Rose Gold. All the while, the reader wonders about Patty’s motives and whether we can trust the story Rose Gold tells. Slowly, we learn that while Rose Gold is a victim of her mother’s manipulation, she’s also capable of that same type of toxic manipulation now that she’s a grown woman. Rose Gold moves from believing she’s sick, to distrusting her mother, to attempting to trust her mother again to… I won’t spoil it for you.

From the very beginning, Patty, a master manipulator, comes across as an unreliable narrator who cannot be trusted. The media and the neighbors in their small town certainly see Patty as a monster who deliberately made her daughter sick.

I’m only a third of the way through this novel, so I cannot give a final verdict on it yet, but so far it slowly pulls the curtain back to reveal a complex mother-daughter relationship using two deeply flawed characters.

The two audible narrators are Megan Dodds and Jill Winternitz. I’ve never listened to these two readers before, but I really like their voices. For me, good narration in an audiobook is tantamount to good writing.

I look forward to finishing this book.

Darling Rose Gold

Photo credit: Amazon.com

August 6, 2020 0

What I’m Reading Now: Maude by Donna Mabry

I first heard Maude on a lengthy car trip from southern Mississippi to east Texas. At first I wasn’t too sure about the audiobook’s narrator, Shana Gagnon, but as time went on I grew accustomed to her accent, which sounded more Northeast than the expected Southern accent.

Maude is the story of a woman born in 1892 in rural Tennessee. She lives through many of the historic events of the twentieth century–the pandemic flu, the Great Depression and both world wars. While the story touches on all of these events, it’s really about her personal and family life and how she lives, loves, and survives through poverty, motherhood, and two marriages.

The book is one of my all-time favorites. I love how the story moves through time and lets us witness one family moving from the horse and buggy days to the modern era of running water and automobiles. I love the characters, too, and how Donna Mabry uses their dialogue and actions to characterize them. For instance, the mother-in-law “welcomes” her daughter-in-law on her first night in a new home by leaving her out on the doorstep, and the sheriff of a sleepy town takes frequent naps at his desk during the day.

Mabry tells the story in first-person from Maude’s perspective. The real-life Maude is Mabry’s paternal grandmother. As Mabry explains in her intro to the novel, her grandma Maude used to share a bedroom with her some evenings, and during those times Maude would share stories from her life. At the encouragement of her daughter, Mabry decided to write down the stories, and they became this novel, which I would call both uplifting and sad.

This weekend, I started re-listening to the novel on a short car trip to Knoxville, and it will be my go-to listen today while I’m on the treadmill. Gotta love these audiobooks!

Maude

July 26, 2020 0

What I’m Reading Now: The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson

The Other Side, a memoir written by Lacy M. Johnson, at first feels like the story of her rape and attempted murder at the hands of her ex-boyfriend. However, it’s more than that. It also tells the story of a woman who continues to suffer PTSD as a victim of such a crime as well as a constant fear that her tormentor will come back for her.

The structure of the memoir might alienate some readers because the transitions between events are not smooth. She skips back and forth and back between childhood events, details about ex-lovers, and more recent details of her life with her husband and children. At times it took me a moment to figure out where we were in time, which annoyed me. Perhaps the author wants the narrative to give off a feeling of confusion and uncertainty, as if she’s trying to somehow give the reader a teeny tiny glimpse of what it might be like to live in a fractured mind. While I see the possible reasons for telling the story this way, I can still say it frustrated me.

The audio version I listened to was read by the author and lasts only four hours. Though the book is succinct, at times I questioned why she included certain details about her life after the rape that didn’t feel directly connected to the rape. Perhaps she did it to give the reader a sense of her personality and life circumstances.

One positive thing I can say about this author is that she doesn’t try to charm the reader into liking her. A lot of nonfiction writers choose to present themselves in a “good” light, but not Johnson. She doesn’t shy from things that some women would be ashamed to admit, such as her time working as a stripper or that she lived with her abuser for over two years before he kidnapped her. Given people’s tendencies to blame a victim for abuse, I think adding these details shows both courage and honesty on Johnson’s part. Brava.

July 24, 2020 0