In Progress: Cutting for Stone

Well, we haven't yet discussed this novel at our next book club meeting, so I won't spill the beans about it, but I am loving this story. I find myself stealing away to read a chapter or two at a time.

There's nearly a foot of snow on the ground here, and I am loving the trip to Addis Ababa that is the basis of this novel. To hear of the warm breezes and lush bougainvillea is a lovely, welcomed treat. I love novels that transport me to far away places.

I'm heading to Las Vegas tomorrow, and will take this one with me on the plane. It's about a 5 hour flight and I plan to polish this one off...it's been a pleasure so far. I'll write more upon my return.

A Post from My BFF Katherine Shea!!!



Best thing to come out of McGill
was my friendship with K.

Katherine is one of my best friends. We met back in first year at McGill University in Montreal. In the old Douglas Hall residence, she lived just across the lounge from me, and we became fast friends. We had a blast together when we were young. We'd go out dancing until all hours in places like The Lizard Lounge, and other fun night clubs. We made lots of great memories, most of which will never grace the pages of ANY blog!

Douglas Hall, McGill University

Although I didn't stay at McGill for the entire 4 years
(I left early due to aforementioned activities), Katherine and I have maintained a close friendship ever since. We have lots of great memories and I hope that we will have lots more in the future.

One of our common points, is our love of reading. When we get together, we always go talk about what we're reading or what we've uncovered. I recently asked Katherine about her favorite books, so she sent along this list, and I'd like to include this note from Katherine on my blog. I hope you enjoy some of Katherine's suggestions...I know there are several that she recommended to me, and I have since enjoyed! 

"Hi Claire,



Melissa, Me, Katherine & Alex
Oct 15, 2005

This is just a running list of books I love .. but my top ten? Hmmm…that’s really hard because I classify them differently in my head – Anne of Green Gables is from my childhood so I’ll always love them … Harry Potter series were the first books I shared with the kids and we talked about them incessantly ….. hmmm….some are sad and touching.. others I can’t stop thinking about – I’ve taken a stab at a top ten list for adults:
 
1. The Year of Magical Thinking (extremely sad but so touching and beautifully written..)
2. Touch
3. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
4. The Descendants
5. The Book Thief
6. The Kite Runner (I loved this one too!!!)
7. Sarah’s Key (Ditto)
8. Room (not a favorite but was entertaining)
9. The Help (fell asleep during the movie)
10. The Glass Castle (read it, but have forgotten the story line--hence the blog!)

You can include this on your blog in any way, shape or form you wish – I’m always happy to share the books I love! The Prodigal Summer isn’t on this list nor is The Red Tent because I only started this list about 2 years ago & I read those books a while ago. A Fine Balance and Such A Long Journey are two more I love but I read them ages ago … and The Poisonwood Bible …
 
Love
K"

I love you too Katherine!!!

CFUW and A Night with Robert Hough

Last night, I attended the CFUW Vaughan Chapter's Annual Winter Fundraising Dinner at the local Woodbridge Legion Hall. The night consisted of a hearty roast beef dinner followed by a presentation by Robert Hough, author of Dr. Brinkley's Tower.

Although I haven't yet read this novel, I couldn't help picking up an autographed copy of the fictional novel. It sounds like a fun tale about a larger-than-life conman from the 1930's.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Here's a little info about CFUW:

The Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) is a voluntary, non-profit, self-funded, non-partisan, non-governmental organization, which serves to improve access to education for women, for peace, justice, human rights and to support programs that improve the environment. This dedicated group is about 10,000 members strong in 112 clubs across the country.

If you’d like more information on becoming a member or to learn about the work done by the CFUW, visit www.cfuw.org.

The Butterfly House by Marcia Preston

Originally, I had planned to save this for summer reading, (see Dec's post), but I changed my mind. Having just finished Wally Lamb's novel, I was in the mood for something a bit lighter. (i.e. no killing, raping, cheating, insanity etc). I guess I avoided a couple of those  topics, but got another bid dose of the "neurosis"...

The Butterfly House was given to me at my Book Club's Christmas book exchange. It's not a book that I would have chosen myself, but that's why I looked forward to reading it! A Harlequin book (not the romance type), I have to admit having never read anything from this publishing house. That's the beauty of the book club...I am willingly forced to try new genres and read authors that I would have previously dismissed.

Here's a quick summary as per Goodreads.com:

"As a child, Bobbie Lee found refuge from her lonely life at her best friend's house. Rockhaven was a place of magic, colored by the butterflies that Cincy Jaines's mother, Lenora, studied. Her friendship with Cincy and Lenora soon became Bobbie's compass. But the tangled intimacies between them began to unravel, and in one night, Rockhaven became a place of unspeakable tragedy. Now, a decade later, the long shadows of that night continue to haunt Bobbie, despite her attempts to hide from the past. When a stranger with ties to Lenora and Cincy arrives at her doorstep, she is forced to confront the memories she has tried to avoid, and the dark secret at the heart of the tragedy slowly emerges"


Marcia Preston

This novel is an easy read. It's about two childhood friends who grow up together and both suffer from absent fathers. Their mothers are both struggling financially and they both have very little material wealth. While Bobbie Lee's mom struggles with severe alcoholism, Cynthia's mom takes on the nurturing role for both girls. Lenora is an unemployed butterfly researcher who conducts experiments on her sun porch. The central metaphor is thus established between Bobbi Lee's coming of age, and the butterfly's metamorphosis.

There is an interesting, brief interview with this author at: http://www.trashionista.com/2008/06/author-interv-1.html

The author also has a website that shows she is quite prolific: http://www.marciapreston.com/

Anyhow, this novel has left me yearning for a strong, stable and intelligent protagonist, who isn't loosing her mind, temper, husband or morality. As you can tell with my reading list, it's been a while since I've enjoyed a strong, solid female character.  Not sure if I'm on track with my next novel, but I'll let you know!

It's Time: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

January is nearly over, and although we haven't had terrible weather, I did find myself hybernating a little. With the snow on the ground, and the skies looking gray, I was quite often tempted to make a cup of tea and cozy up in my new reading nook. I recently redecorated my home office, and as a part of the design, I incorporated an antique armchair and my favorite bits of art. I can sit comfortably with my feet up and look out the window to the back garden. No wonder I like reading so much...I feel like my pearch is a little piece of heaven!

Now on to Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed.

Over the course of more than 700 pages, the novel takes on major events (the Columbine High School shootings, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina) and weighty issues like motherhood, marriage, alienation, psychological trauma, drug addiction, chaos theory, prison reform, grief, the connection between ancestry and identity — to name just a few.

Here's a brief summary:

"When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American." (Attributed to Book Browse review)

"Lamb is an amiable, credible storyteller at first. But his writing style is undistinguished, and so is his thinking; the combination leads to mind-numbing mediocrity. This novel is ill-disciplined in the extreme – in its length, its constant repetition of the same information, its sprawling, poorly integrated structure.

The volume bespeaks an arrogance. High sales thanks to the blessing of a certain talk-show host ()prah) seem to have reprieved Wally Lamb from the editorial judgment and often productive self-doubt that other writers continue to exercise in order to craft novels more humbly constrained both in scope and page count."

For more of the catty (and actually entertaining) review check out Lionel Shriver's review in the Telegraph...It's not pretty.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/3708957/The-Hour-I-First-Believed-review.html

I think that Lamb's novel is an easy read, that sprawls over many major events of the early 2000's.  It is not a literary read, more an armchair ride. I enjoyed the easy read, but I was happy to have it finally come to an end. I think his other works like She's Come Undone and This Much I Know is True are stronger.

Now, my blog is up-to-date and I feel like reading some non-fiction.








 

Pillars of the Earth...Epic...Maybe just a bit too long!

Can you ever try a bit too hard to be EPIC? Maybe so...

Ken Follett is an author that my father has enjoyed for years. Now typically, I don't enjoy spy mysteries, war and bloodshed sagas, or historical quests...Understandable then that I was not even slightly tempted to read Follett's work. That is until another mom at my daughter's hockey practice raved about Pillars of the Earth. She told me that this was her FAVORITE book of all time.

Now, FAVORITE book of all time is huge praise in my mind, so I started a quest to find this novel and give Follett as try. After about a month of looking for a second hand copy, I found it at my local Value Village for $3.99!!! (I love VV!!!)

Central plot summary: The Pillars of the Earth is the construction of a new cathedral in the fictional English town of Kingsbridge during the 12th century. But the story is really about the conflicts between the people building the cathedral and those who want to destroy it.

It is the early 12th century and England is about to erupt into civil war. The new prior of the monastery at Kingsbridge is determined to rebuild the current run down cathedral into one that will glorify God. He finds a young master builder who shares his vision of building the most beautiful cathedral in England.

Unfortunately, the local bishop is a power hungry man with other plans. He works to disrupt the prior's efforts at every turn. His frequent ally in this is a cruel and vengeful earl consumed by his own greed.

This novel is over 900 pages, and I have to say that I thought it was a bit drawn out. I like the character development and I also appreciated that Follett does create very strong female heroines. However, I did find it too long, and could have been shorter without loosing any of it's value. I would recommend this novel as an entertaining read. I have purchase the followup novel and plan to give it a read in the near future.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy



This novel was one of my reading group's selections. Each year we try to use the Vaughan Public Library's book club reading list to cut down on the number of books that we are forced to purchase. As it turned out VPL had a set of Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony, so we were in luck.

I've read several novels about the Japanese experience of internment in Canada during the second world war, and I found this novel interesting because it depicted the experience of being Chinese during this difficult time in Canadian history. It was an interesting opportunity to examine these events from a different, and threatened perspective.

Here's a quick summary of Choy's novel (thanks to Good Reads):

Author Wayson Choy

Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides the backdrop for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant Chinese family. The siblings grapple with their individual identities in a changing world, wresting autonomy from the strictures of history, family, and poverty. Sister Jook-Liang dreams of becoming Shirley Temple and escaping the rigid, old ways of China. Adopted Second Brother Jung-Sum, struggling with his sexuality and the trauma of his childhood in China, finds his way through boxing. Third Brother Sekky, who never feels comfortable with the multitude of Chinese dialects swirling around him, becomes obsessed with war games, and learns a devastating lesson about what war really means when his 17-year-old babysitter dates a Japanese man.

Mingling with life in Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghosts, and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, who is the heart and pillar of the family. Side by side, her three grandchildren survive hardships and heartbreaks with grit and humor. Like the jade peony of the title, Choy's storytelling is at once delicate, powerful, and lovely.

The Jade Peony was selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the "100 Most Important Books in Canadian History" in 2005. It was also an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year in 1998, and was winner of the 1995 Trillium Award (shared with Margaret Atwood).



The Cat's Table is the Cat's Meow!!!

October's read for my local book club, and what a treat Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table turned out to be!

Here's a good summary of the book which is taken from Good Reads:

Michael Ondaatje

Great Artwork!

"In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England – a ‘castle that was to cross the sea’. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly ‘Cat's Table’ with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, ‘bursting all over the place like freed mercury’. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner – his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever."

I enjoyed the story very much and I really love the way that Ondaatje crafts the language. He is a talented Canadian author who has written many entertaining novels. My favorite of his is Anil's Ghost. It's definitely worth a try too!

December's Book Club Exchange

December's Book Club Exchange is always a fun one. This year was not exception.

I've been very negligent of my blog lately and I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe it was the busy Christmas season, or maybe a hit a few books that I didn't necessarily enjoy...I find it harder to write about the ones I don't like. Never mind, I will try to get caught up over the next few days.

I received Marcia Preston's The Butterfly House and hope to enjoy this one over the summer.

Book Exchange Summary 2012

I love my Book Club, and the December meeting is one of the social highlights of the feastive season. It's the annual book exchange where each lady brings a new, wrapped book and we draw for selection order. Basically, it becomes a game of either choosing a wrapped book from the pile in the middle of the room, or "stealing" from someone who has already unwrapped and revealed the title of the book.

Most years there are a couple of "hot" titles that rip around the room, and cause great commotion on how to get the book back. It's always a good laugh and everyone leaves with a new book to read over Christmas!

Here's a list of the books that were offered in this year's exchange:

1.  The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler (I wanted this one so much that I went and bought myself a copy for my book pile.)

2. Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy (Old classic that I have on my Kobo--I read it a long time ago, and I'm not sure I want to read the Russian classics again for awhile.)

3.  Still Alice by Lisa Genova (Already read it, and loved it. Of course, I always think I'm losing my mind, but that's part of the process of reading it!)

4.  Astray by Emma Donahue (My contribution to the exchange as we read and enjoyed her earlier title "Room" this year)

5.  Canada, Richard Ford (yikes, Richard Ford is following me...I recently crawled through his "Independance Day", and I'm not signing up for more from him!)

6.  Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling (Not sure I'll ever take her seriously since Harry Potter)

7.  The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis (?)

8. The Shoemakers Wife by Adriana Trigiani (Nice cover...I think Lorece got this one and enjoyed it)

9.  Magnified World by Grace O'Connell (?)

10.   The Butterfly House by Marcia Preston (This is the book that I received, and I just finished blogging about it, See Feb 8 2013)

11.  The Secret Daughter by Shula Gowda (Loved this book, and think it's one not to be missed)

12.  The Twelve Tribes. (Duplication of books...must be a popular one in the book stores.)

13.  Inside by Alix Ohlin (?)

14.  The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom (shortish novel, and heard it was ok)

15.  The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (I have this one on my list to read also.)

16. Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (On my side table, just waiting to read it. My mom keeps asking me if I have read it yet. I think it's a really good one.)

So as you can see, there are some really good titles that came up at the party. I look forward to reading them, and will enjoy selecting my contribution for next December's exchange.

OK, So I read one, But I have forgotten...

Ok, so sometimes I forget the titles of what I have just read. This time, I know I have read it, but I can't remember the title, and I can't remember what the book was about.

Usually, it's a sign that I wasn't much keen on the book to start. Knowing my short memory, I try to blog about the book as soon as I have finished it. In this case, I was so excited to get onto reading the October selection for my book club, that I put the finished novel down (somewhere) and now I can't find it, and I can't remember much about it. (In my defence, I am reorganizing my home office, so I have an excuse as I have just packed all my books up into boxes for a week.)

Hold on now...I remember it was about a man, who is a real estate agent in New Jersey, and he is divorced and struggling to maintain a relationship with his son. During the course of the story, his son is hit in the head with a baseball in a batting cage accident in Cooperstown.

What was it called again: One Ball Too Many?...No that isn't it.

Tell you what, when I find it, I'll fill in the blanks and we'll call it a blog entry. (Wonder if I can google a book just with short description?) Oh well.

OK. I FOUND IT. IT'S CALLED INDEPENDENCE DAY BY RICHARD FORD. Don't rush out and buy it. I'll lend you a copy!

Listen, I don't purport to know much about literature, but this is one of the reasons I wouldn't recommend it. David Louis Edelman sums up why I found it boring:

"No one could accuse Richard Ford of rushing things in Independence Day. (Bascombe spends fifty pages alone narrating his house tour with the Markhams.) But those who can float with the tide will find a brilliant and absorbing underbelly to Independence Day that makes it one of the most accomplished novels of the year."

No thanks to underbelly!!!
 

What Stinks Around Here?!? Day Late and a Dollar Short...OH YAHHHH!!!!!

What a drag...

Well, it pains me to say that this book was a real disappointment. Talk about perpetuating stereotypes, with little attempt to create a portrait of a real life family. "Well, you're reading fiction Claire!" you say. Ok, I realise that this is fiction, but Dollar Short just seems to be painfullly predictable.

This is a summary of the novel by Book Reporter: "Through the literary device of the talk story, we explore the ups and downs of "the Price family." At the opening, everyone is at odds with each other. Viola and her husband Cecil have separated after a tumultuous, 38-year marriage. Viola's second oldest daughter Charlotte and she are not speaking. Viola is troubled by a situation with her youngest daughter Janel. The only son, Lewis, is an alcoholic, in and out of jail and alienated from the family because he feels he is the "failure" among his middle-class sisters. Paris, who admittedly is living out her mother's dream, is the only one at peace with Viola. But even Paris is harboring secrets. Meanwhile, Charlotte is not speaking to Paris because she feels Viola and Paris triangulate against her. The whole family is in turmoil."

Here's my overview of the dysfunctional characters:

-Overbearing fat black mother who's on her deathbed and needs to fix everyone's problems
-Four siblings who are fighting in lumps;
-One daughter is constantly popping pills and abusing prescription drugs
-One daughter married to a man who is sexually abusing her daughter...and she is in denial about it
-One daughter who's husband has a secret child with another woman and is paying child support behind her back
-One alcoholic brother who has a son that he never parents

Needless to say, it's grim. So painfully grim and predictable in some ways.

This was my book club's September read, and it was chosen from the local library's Book Club collection set. We try to use this moving collection at least 50% of the time, so that we don't have to buy a new book every month.

This month's selection was really disappointing though, and I question how it could have been included in the library's collection.

Oh well, onwards and upwards. October's read will be much better, I am quite sure!

Great Summer Read: The Red Tent

No summer is complete without a great story while laying in the sun or sitting by the pool. This year, my summer relaxation was perfected by Anita Diamant's The Red Tent.

Although my book club read this novel last year, I missed that month and put The Red Tent on my long list of "must reads". I am so glad I came back to it this month, as I will remember it as the summer vacation book of 2012. 

Arrowhead Provincial Park

Ironically, while it's call The Red Tent, I found myself reading inside a green and white tent in Arrowhead Provincial Park during a family camping trip. Our days were busy with hiking trails, kayaking on fresh water lakes and exploring the creatures of slow moving rivers. But at night, after the kids had roasted marshmallows on the camp fire and finally gone to sleep, I would pull out the bottle of Amarone and a flashlight so that I could enjoy Diamant's story under the northern Canadian stars. Reading by flashlight in the middle of the woods is absorbing...no disturbances (other than the occasional scratching from the nearby bushes.

Here's how Amazon.com summarizes the book:

"Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction."

Hands down, I loved this book. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading rich stories about strong women. Two bid thumbs up!!!

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

This is my book club's August selection, and we will be discussing it tomorrow morning at 9:30 am.  I just finished it, and wanted to jot down my thoughts before the meeting. (It should be noted that the Vaughan Public Library carries this novel as one of their Book Club selections, and as a result, we were all able to borrow this title from our local branch!)

I heard through the grapevine that many of the ladies haven't finished Gods. Some really didn't enjoy the mythological characters and references, and so they gave up early after about 40 pages.

Knowing that, I pressed on a little further, and to my surprise, I actually found this novel quite refreshing and very entertaining.

Here's summary: Twelve gods of Olympus find themselves living in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in an old London house--and none too happy about it. Times are tough for Gods, as no one really believes in them anymore, so they've had to get day jobs: Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ. 
 
Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed-but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world

This was a very creative novel. It was fiction, but I want to label more as creative "mythological" fiction. It reminded me alot of Tom Robbins' work...Extremely imaginative, and very unique. There is fiction, and then there is a leap of faith. Phillips takes the reader to the next level of creativity. Here's a link to her blog...She's a character! http://www.mariephillips.co.uk/

One reservation that I had with Phillips writing is that it sometimes relied too heavily on conversation, and I almost felt that I was reading a script at times. Not surprisingly, it has been picked up by Hollywood as a screenplay. 

King's 11/22/63: A Great Trip Back in Time

OMG, it's been too long. I have been reading but I lost my thought process. I didn't blog the last book that I read because I didn't finish it (that being Fifty Shades of Grey...ugh...Maybe I'll finish it, but I won't promise that!).

So here we go...Stephen King's 11/22/63 is a whopping 1900 pages.  It took me nearly a month of steady bedtime reading to polish this one off, but I found myself wanting to turn in early, just to catch up with the story. This is a very entertaining read, and I found myself thinking about the book during the day.

Here's a synopsis:  Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

This is my first King novel andI have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting such cleaver writing, but I can't fault it at all. In fact, I look forward to reading more of his creative work. 

Life's Getting Too Complicated!

This video makes me chuckle. The more complicated our world becomes, the more silly we become! Enjoy!

Great Find: The Lost Daughters of China

Another Value Village Score!!!

While rummaging through the shelves at my local Value Village, I was lucky to find Karin Evans  account of her journey to China to adopt her daughter.  The Lost Daughters of China is the Evans' retelling of her adoption process between America and China in the late 1990's. 

Evans and her husband, unable to conceive children naturally, decide to adopt a baby girl from the Guangdong area of China. Although easy to decide that this is what she wants, her journey through the endless adoption red tape, and her far-away travels to the Peoples Republic of China shows how difficult a process this really is.

During her trip to the southern Chinese state, Evans' discovers that the One-Child policy is the tip of a very complicated social problem. The notion that male children are more valuable is ingrained in the Confusion culture for more than 1000 years. Further, this problematic policy creates such familial strife and suffering for many families who feel great pressure to produce a male child. Child abandonment is an ongoing problem that is a result of the policy that was introduced in the 1980's.

Evan's book is well written. She has done a great amount of research in preparing the context of her work. She sights academics, government studies, poems and literature. I found myself re-reading a few of such passages that were particularly touching.
 
For example, she quotes Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet: "Your children are not your children, they are not of  you, but they come through you. They are the gift of life's longing for itself."And also, a particularly beautiful excerpt from Meng Jia's poem Traveler's Song:

My loving mother, thread in hand,
Mended the coat I have on now,
Stitch by stitch, just before I left home,
Thinking that I might be gone a long time.

How can a blade of young grass
Ever repay the warmth of the spring sun?


One short coming of Evans' book is that there is an obvious absence of information about her daughter's progress in her new home country. How does her daughter feel about being adopted, and how does she cope with the feelings around being adopted? Also, she does become somewhat repetitive towards the end of the book, and I found that a little tighter editing would have been quite helpful there.

Overall this was a good read, but I would consider this only as a starting point for learning other aspects of adoption and the issues surrounding this complicated process.