reviews

Mother and Daughter Relationships Examined Author: Amy Tan Amy Tan focuses on mother daughter relationships, the strife and the underpinnings of love, the history that both binds and oddly separates. The Bonesetter’s Daughter is no different. Ruth Young is more interested in her harried and ironic career in ghost writing and her long term, going-nowhere soon, live-in boyfriend than in the petty squabbling and controlling nature of her arguably unstable mother, LuLing. Ruth is modern, yet LuLing is very much stuck in her traditional Chinese past with her belief in vengeful ghosts, ancestral guilt, and folk remedies. She doesn’t know [...]

"There is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or in being anything other than what you are." Author: Elizabeth Gilbert Elizabeth Gilbert has compared her new book, City of Girls, to a champagne cocktail. In her press materials, she describes it as “light and bright, crisp and fun.” I agree that City of Girls is all these delicious things, but it’s so much more. Lest you think it’s mere fluff, I can assure you: it’s not. In fact, I would say that City of Girls is a deep, affecting, feminist WWII novel—even though it’s dressed up in feathers and sipping [...]

True love... Author:  Karsten Heuer It was going to be one heck of a long walk.  And they were going to have to keep up with some of the best walkers on the planet.  Known for the lengthy spring migration from its wintering range to its calving grounds along the shore of Beaufort Sea – longer than any migrating land animal – the Porcupine caribou herd was not going to make this easy.  But biologist Karsten Heuer and his fiancée filmmaker Leanne Allison were nothing if they weren’t determined.    So in April 2003 they set out to follow the herds [...]