The Sunday Salon.... It's Sunday, Call Your Mom!

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's the place where Book Bloggers from around the world share their bookish finds with one another in a virtual place called The Sunday Salon. Thank you to Deb at ReaderBuzz for keeping us all together on Sundays and hosting The Sunday Salon now! I also visited with Kim at The Caffeinated Reader, another Sunday gathering place for us bookish people called The Sunday Post . 

I am fortunate that I am still able to hang out with my Mom. All my life (and that happens to be 60+ years) I have had my Mother to talk to, walk the mall with, do pizza & movie nights, game nights, do crafts with, share books with, basically anything Mothers & Daughters do. She's always been like a BFF. Not that I didn't have her pulling her hair out once in a while, especially during those wonderful teenage years, but in the end we have overcome all that stuff to arrive at two mature women enjoying a special kind of bond. A few years ago, I moved 800 miles away. So, our hangout days turned into video chats and once a year visits. This is week two of Mom flying down South to spend time with me in the Sunny Carolinas. 

I've put most of my blogging on hold while she's been here, but I did get to thinking about what books there were about Mother/Daughters relationships. SO, in honor of our Mother Daughter visit, here are some books about that unique bond Mothers share with their Daughters...

Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen... 
Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All their lives, it's been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, never question anything about her mother's past or background. But when Ruth's desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal crack's in Ruth's carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.

No one can know Ruth's history. There is a reason why Ruth kept them moving every few years and why she was ready - in a moment's notice - to be gone in the night.  

But danger is coming. Is it coming from outside, from Ruth's past? Is Ruth reaching a breaking point? Or is the danger coming from the darkness that may live in Catherine, herself?

Propulsive, brilliant, layered and provocative, GONE TONIGHT is a thriller that showcases Sarah Pekkanen at the top of her game. 

Published August 2023 by Macmillan Publishers

****************************************

Things I Wish I Told My Mother by Susan Patterson, Susan Dilallo and  James Patterson... 
A mother and daughter on vacation in Paris unpack a lifetime of secrets and hopes—with a giant Pattersonian twist at the end!Every daughter has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets.

Laurie is an artist, a collector of experiences. She travels the world with a worn beige duffel bag.Every mother has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets.

“Dr. Liz,” Laurie’s mother, is an elegant perfectionist who travels the world with a matched set of suitcases.When Laurie surprises her mother with a dream vacation, it brings an unexpected sparkle to her eyes. So begins Things I Wish I Told My Mother. You will wish this novel never ends.

Susan Patterson is James Patterson's wife and this is their first collaboration. Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo "were inspired to write their moving novel by the shared experience of beloved mothers who lived into their nineties then died in the same year."

Published April 20223 by Little, Brown & Co.

***********************************************

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage... 
A mute, diabolical 7-year-old wages war against her mother in this chilling debut. Hanna Jensen has never spoken aloud in front of another human being. Her parents, Alex and Suzette, have subjected her to scores of tests, fearing a physical disability, but in truth, Hanna simply finds words to be an ugly means of expression and chooses not to use them. Hanna also knows that her silence anguishes her mother, which is an added bonus; although Hanna adores her father, who believes she can do no wrong, she despises Suzette and torments her at every turn. Hanna has been expelled from three preschools and two kindergartens for bad behavior, forcing Suzette to home-school her—an arrangement that further strains their fraught relationship. The constant stress is wreaking havoc on Suzette’s health, so she redoubles her efforts to locate a school that will accept her troubled child. But as Suzette dreams of child-free days, Hanna is making plans of her own. This tightly plotted, expertly choreographed tale unfolds in alternating chapters from the perspectives of Hanna and Suzette. Author Stage palpably conveys Suzette’s fear, anger, frustration, and desperation while exploring the deleterious effects that motherhood can have on one’s marriage and self-worth. Hanna’s chapters are calm and upbeat by comparison, but they offer no respite from the book’s mounting tension; naïve observations and whimsical fantasies share the page with twisted musings and nefarious schemes, the jarring juxtaposition only compounding the reader's sense of unease.

This book got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, and that made me take a look at this one. Sounds creepy good. Published in 2018 by St. Martins Press

*************************************************

Happy reading, have a wonderful rest of the week. I'll be back blogging full time next Sunday... Suzanne

Memoir Monday... I'm Suppose To Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelan

A memoir of mothers and daughters—and mothers as daughters—traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again.  

For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers—French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly—exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja’s body changed and “began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand,” their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother’s past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them.

 It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled.  Her grandmother’s memories contradicted her mother’s at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every reader will recognize herself and her family in this gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir, which helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most. 

I happened upon I'm Suppose To Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman and wanted to know what Nadja Spiegelman was suppose to be protected from. The title made me curious. And so, I read what it was about and was fascinated. I opened up the preview and started reading and could not put it down. Aren't we women fascinating?, and the relationship between mothers and daughters is fascinating... and complex. This book looks like one of those books every daughter should read. Just published August 2nd by Riverhead Books and On my Wishlist!
Save

The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer... A Review

The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer is a really good book. It's not often that I start a review with such a simple observation, but as I tried to wrap my thoughts around the book I just read, that's what stuck in my head. I read it steady from start to finish, but not in a desperate kind of furor. It held my interest, I enjoyed it, it just wasn't an OMG kind of read. And that's okay. Not every book I read has to be the second coming...

The gist of the story... Single mother, Beth, has always worried that she'd lose her daughter. Then one day it happens... When a moment's distraction at a crowded fair separates Beth and Carmel from each other, a man posing as Carmel's estranged Grandfather takes the opportunity to whisk her off with the words, "Carmel, it's your mother. She's had a terrible accident."And so begins the story of Eight-year-old Carmel's abduction, told in the alternating voices of Beth and Carmel, mother and daughter. Beth's story is the struggle to find Carmel and live through the process. Carmel's story is a bit more complicated... how she learns to grasp the lies she is told and keep true to herself. We also come to find out that Carmel's abduction wasn't some random kidnapping, but a more deliberate action because the man posing as Carmel's grandfather believes there is something very special about little Carmel... As life slowly moves forward for Beth and for Carmel, the ending of the book fulfills the need for some kind of closure.

The plot was very well done. This is NOT your typical child kidnapping mystery! I really liked reading the two perspectives of the story, and Carmel in particular was interesting because you generally never get to "hear" what the victim is thinking along the way. But then again, Carmel doesn't quite think she's a victim, at least not because of being taken away by "Grandad".

This is a story of loss, of moving on with your life after a loss and a story of the close ties of a mother and daughter. It's also the story of every parent's nightmare- their child being abducted. It's not a loud story, but one that is quietly powerful. Well developed characters and a good story make this definitely a good read. And as I said, I really liked the alternating voices of Beth and Carmel moving the story along. Would I recommend the book? Yes!


*This book is part of my I Love Libraries 2016 reading challenge! Because I borrowed this book from my local library! 

Memoir Monday… Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro

Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro…
One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without explanation Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were left to pick up the pieces, always tormented by the thought: Why did their mother abandon them?

Thirty-five years later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. After decades of hiding her painful memories, she has just days to find out what happened that summer and confront the fear she could do the same to her kids. But Melissa never expects to stumble across a cache of letters her mother wrote to her but never sent, which could hold the answers she seeks.

Haunting yet ultimately uplifting, Pieces of My Mother chronicles one woman's quest to discover what drives a mother to walk away from the children she loves. Alternating between Melissa's tumultuous coming-of-age and her mother's final days, this captivating memoir reveals how our parents' choices impact our own and how we can survive those to forge our own paths.

Heartfelt. Sad. Wonderful writing. The story of Melissa coming to understand the woman who was her mother in painful memories and present day moments as Melissa comes to be with her mother as she lay dying at home. Finding unsent letters in a folder reveals to Melissa a woman who is more than just the mother who left her. The chapters alternate between "Then" and "Now", which in another writers hands may be confusing, but Melissa Cistaro navigates this territory wonderfully, and it seems to flow so naturally. If you enjoy memoirs, if you are a mother, if you have a mother, if you see a baby crying in her stroller and you just want to pick her up and hug her, you will enjoy this book. Reminds me a bit of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I was deeply moved at times and felt such empathy towards Melissa. Definitely a good read and a worth your time.

This book was released on May 5th by Sourcebooks, and is available from your favorite book seller! I received an eGalley of this book for my honest review.

Memoir Monday... The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

My first impression of The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok was "here we go again". Another memoir about living with a schizophrenic mother, etc., etc. But then the reviews started coming in fast and furious about this book. Hmmm, maybe I need take another closer look at this one... Here's what Publisher's Weekly wrote about The Memory Palace:

"This moving, compassionately candid memoir by artist and children's book author Bartok describes a life dominated by her gifted but schizophrenic mother. Bartók and her sister, Rachel, both of whom grew up in Cleveland, are abandoned by their novelist father and go to live with their mother at their maternal grandparents home. By 1990, a confrontation in which her mother cuts her with broken glass leads Bartók (née Myra Herr) to change her identity and flee the woman she calls the cry of madness in the dark. Eventually, the estrangement leaves her mother homeless, wandering with her belongings in a knapsack, writing letters to her daughter's post office box. Reunited 17 years later, Bartók is suffering memory loss from an accident; her mother is 80 years old and dying from stomach cancer. Only through memories do they each find solace for their collective journey. Using a mnemonic technique from the Renaissance—a memory palace—Bartók imagines, chapter by chapter, a mansion whose rooms secure the treasured moments of her reconstructed past. With a key found stashed in her mother's knapsack, she unlocks a rental storage room filled with paintings, diaries, and photos. Bartók turns these strangely parallel narratives and overlapping wonders into a haunting, almost patchwork, narrative that lyrically chronicles a complex mother-daughter relationship.

This sounds fascinating to me. Like a treasure chest of memories, Bartok constructs her memoir around these objects. And glancing through excerpts of Mira Bartok's book, I found some beautiful artwork along with her compelling prose. So, The Memory Palace is now on my wish list! Have you read this one yet?! Share your thoughts if you have, I'd love to hear what you thought of this!

In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld... A Review

In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld

The Beauty of Nature is all around us...

Joyce Hinnefeld describes In Hovering Flight as "the story of the struggles and triumphs of bird artist and activist Addie Sturmer Kavanagh, ornithologist and musician Tom Kavanagh, and their daughter, poet Scarlet Kavanagh. It’s a novel about mothers, daughters, and art; about illness, death, and burial; about fragile eco-systems and tenacious human relationships—all explored through characters who are inspired by the lives, and particularly the songs, of birds."

I found In Hovering Flight to be thought provoking and stirring. I started reading it and couldn't put it down until I finished it. It begins with a daughter coming home to say goodbye to her mother dying of cancer. Addie, the mother, a famous bird artist and environmental activist, is surrounded by her best friends from college, Cora & Lou, and her dear husband, Tom. In saying goodbye, we are whisked off to the beginning of Addie and Toms humble beginnings as student and college professor, lovers who are passionate about the natural world around them. We learn of a complicated life, of the strength of friendship and the agony of betrayal and how the sum of everything draws everyone back to Addie in the end. With the gentle remembrances of the people most important to Addie, Addies daughter Scarlet gains a better understanding of her mother and who she really was. On the surface it is a love story of Addie & Tom and Addie's struggles with being activist, mother and wife. But just below the surface it is a beautifully written story of the nature that surrounds us and the gifts that it can give us if we just stand still for a moment and take it all in.... listen to the song of the birds... feel the crush of the grass underneath our feet... Watch the soar of a hawk... and how life is precious for all of nature and we should try and appreciate it all while we can.

Bird lovers will appreciate the poetic voice Joyce Hinnefeld lends to the descriptions of the patient wait in the woods to see a scarlet tanger, a wood thrush or a beautiful cardinal, and the mysterious deciphering of a bird song heard in the distance. I've actually gone to Cape May birding during fall migration and this story captures the wonder of it all...

It's a beautifully written story. One that you may find yourself reading passages from again just to revisit the beauty of nature....

Would you like to read an excerpt? You'll find excerpts HERE . To learn more about Joyce Hinnefeld, please visit the author's website HERE! You'll also find an interview with Joyce there too!

In Hovering Flight will be in bookstores this Tuesday, August 25th! I want to thank Caitlin of Unbridled Books for sharing this book with me! It was a very special read and I enjoyed it very much!

*P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

Happy reading...

Suzanne