July | 2018 | Book Chatter

Sunday Matters

My son is back from Orlando and he is also another year older! TWENTY years old now.

Evan DCP 2018

Right Now:

Getting reading to head out to church and then later this afternoon, my MIL is having a BBQ for my son’s birthday. I am making a pasta salad to bring and maybe another dessert.

This Week:

My week is pretty open. Just work, volunteering and book club. I hope it’s cooler this week. Our weather has been hellish and deadly. I feel my skin shriveling up every time I go outside.

Reading:

I am reading The Immortalists for book club. I am reading other books too but I keep switching them out and I am not really getting anywhere. However, I have added tons of new books to my reading pile. My reading brain has already moved into fall even though summer is not to be ignored.

Watching:

I tried to watch The Greatest Showman at last weekend’s movie night but it was 106 and sunny. I could not see a thing so I must rent it.

As for TV, I haven’t been watching anything.

Making:

I got this Greek bottled marinade the other day and made some grilled chicken. That was the best chicken! So lemony and juicy. I served it with roasted potatoes and green beans which was dumb because I had to use the oven and it was so darn hot.

On another night we had chicken again but with chopped seedless cucumbers, Feta, roasted tomatoes (again, the oven) and some hummus.

Grateful for:

All of us being in the same house again. It went by so fast but it was so weird the entire time. While away, the boy learned how to eat steak the right way (medium rare) and he eats sushi now!

I die.

Visible Empire
By Hannah Pittard
Houghton Mifflin, 9780544748064, June 2018, 288pp.

The Short of It:

A plane crash leaves in its wake a host of people struggling to make sense of the tragedy.

The Rest of It:

Visible Empire is a novel based on true events. In 1962 an Air France flight carrying Atlanta’s elite, crashed shortly after takeoff and left an entire community struggling to process the loss of so many well-known people from the art world. The book opens with the crash itself. The reader is briefly introduced to some of the passengers before the plane plunges back to the runway only to become a horribly burned and twisted mass of steel.

And then, the story really starts.

Everyone left behind has a story of course. A man’s mistress was killed on the plane while his wife at home is about to deliver their first child. A young man, denied admission to an integrated school finds himself driving two white men, in the middle of the night when racial tension is so high. Others, just keep repeating the events of the day never really to come to any conclusion or peace as to what has happened to their community.

Visible Empire started off strong but then petered out about half way through. These characters did not interest me enough for me to want to know more about them, or to care what happened to them once the initial shock of the crash wore off. I think for me, the lack of empathy on my end greatly affected my overall impression of the book.

Have you read it? If so, what did you think of it?

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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