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The Boston Girl
By Anita Diamant
Scribner Book Company, Paperback, 9781439199367, August 2015, 336pp.

The Short of It:

This is a story about a young Jewish woman, trying to make a life for herself in Boston during a time when women were just beginning to forge careers for themselves.

The Rest of It:

Addie Baum lives with her family in Boston. As Jewish immigrants, her parents have trouble assimilating to the world around them and prefer to live with the “old ways” and beliefs that they’ve known all their lives. With three daughters, they believe that to be truly successful in life, they must marry well and marry young.

This doesn’t bode well for the Baum girls. Particularly Addie or her troubled older sister. As the three girls make their way through life, we are introduced to a host of supporting characters. All of them interesting but perhaps not all necessary to the story.

Let’s talk about the story a little. I found it to be well told but not terribly exciting. Oddly enough, I managed to read it in just a couple of sittings. It flowed well but it’s really all about Addie’s coming of age which as you can imagine, has some highs and lows. I liked the family dynamic and felt that the author portrayed an immigrant family well.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me that Addie was telling her story to her grand-daughter until the final pages. I don’t usually care for devices like this but it seemed to work well here.

I haven’t read any stories about immigrant families in a long time so this was a nice change of pace. This was a book club pick but I had a family emergency and was not able to attend the meeting so I have no idea how the discussion went. I imagine it went well. Seems like potentially there would be plenty to discuss but I did feel as if the author was a little light-handed with some of the topics.

If I had to compare this book to Diamant’s other book (The Red Tent), I’d have to say that I enjoyed this one quite a bit more.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Everything I Never Told You
By Celeste Ng
(Penguin Books, Paperback, 9780143127550, May 2015, 320pp.)

The Short of It:

Tragedy sometimes brings people together. Sometimes it pushes them apart.

The Rest of It:

Surprisingly, this novel is called a literary thriller by some. A bit odd since we know from page one that Lydia is dead. I suppose the facts surrounding her death could make this a thriller, but I never considered it to be one.

When Lydia goes missing, her parents and siblings realize that they don’t really know who she hangs out with or what she does after school. She’s been leading a double-life in that what she portrays to her family, particularly her father, is a portrait of a popular, smart high school student when in fact she is not popular at all and not doing well in any of her classes.

This American-Asian family is trying to fit into a 1970’s small town Ohio neighborhood and their challenges are great. Of the three siblings, Lydia is the least Asian in appearance. Blonde with blue eyes but the rest of the kids get made fun of and although the father sees it, he chooses to ignore it thinking that what his kids need is a thicker skin, and to just work on being more popular. It’s a lot of pressure for them, especially Lydia which makes the reader question if her death is self-inflicted or something else.

What’s absolutely heartbreaking about this story is that even before Lydia’s death, this family had problems and her death seems to just bring them to the forefront. This family doesn’t communicate with one another. They don’t seem to fully understand or know what is going on in the family or if they do, they are in complete denial about it. There are a lot of missed opportunities to love one another, and that’s the real tragedy in this novel. And just when you want and hope for the parents to swoop in and be parents, they fail miserably and you are left shaking your head over it.It sounds so bleak and some of it is but there is some hope for a reader to cling to.

My book club discussed this and there was plenty to talk about. The topic of mixed marriage, ethnicity in general and the pressure for kids to perform were just a few things we discussed. Most of us felt that the author did a good job of going back and forth in time and sharing just a enough of each character’s perspective to get a feel for them without giving it all away. In that sense, there was an air of mystery to the story which made me want to turn the pages faster.

In summary, it was a pretty good read and gave us plenty to discuss.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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