BookPikks

A cute story about a stay at home mom who jumps back into the workforce after her husband loses his job.  Julia must deal with her guilt over leaving her son, and soon learns that her new clients are just as demanding and unreasonable as the toddler she left at home.

I picked up this book because at first glance, it seemed like a simple story of a girl unexpectedly doing well in her school spelling bee, and I do love a good spelling bee story! However Goldberg soon moves from Eliza’s school spelling bee, to her family’s search for answers and peace. Eliza’s brother joins a cult, her mother tries to order the world around her, and her father becomes consumed with Eliza’s success, believing that it will bring both him and her closer to finding answers in Jewish mysticism. An interesting look at the things that people will do to find peace. I didn’t read the book carefully enough to thoroughly review it. This is a book that needs more time to think through than I can give it!

Even though Miller can write a good story, I didn’t enjoy reading The Senator’s Wife. I finished the book, because it was interesting, and I was hoping that Miller’s characters would redeem themselves in the end, but they didn’t. My negative impression of the book comes from Miller’s complete disdain and lack of respect for marriage. It can be summed up by these few paragraphs between Delia (one of the main characters) and her grown son Evan. In this scene, Delia greets her son and says

“You are almost unbearably handsome. . .You must be utterly impossible to live with.”

“I am,” he assured her, grinning.

And perhaps this was true. He’d had a messy divorce from his first wife, the mother of his kids, in part because he’d begun a relationship with his second wife before the marriage ended. Delia thought she’d gotten the sense of a tremor or two now in the second marriage, but she wasn’t sure.

Now this brief description of Evan’s failed marriage, abandoned children, unfaithfulness and pending divorce is tragic to me, yet in this book, it is par for the course. All of these are looked at as merely normal circumstances in the course of married life. They happen, and life just moves on. But even more than that, one of Miller’s main characters justifies her unfaithfulness as”…she did what she did…that day for love.” Justifying sin by saying you did it for love. What a sad commentary on sin in our world today.

This is the most powerful and most horrifying account of World War II that I have ever read. I am hesitant to recommend this book, as the violence is so personal and so graphic. And yet, the story is so powerful, it is one that should be read. Although classified as a Young Adult novel, I would advise caution for readers younger than 16, and for classroom teachers of children of all ages. The war violence is quite gruesome, and there is some explicit sexual content as well. Some parents would object to their children reading this book even in high school.

Murphy takes the classic story of Hansel and Gretel, and retells it during the setting of World War II Poland. A father and stepmother are forced to send their children into the forest to protect them from Nazi hunters. Taking on the new names of Hansel and Gretel, the children make their way through the forest until they are taken in by the village recluse, Magda. Just as the children find relative safety with Magda, a new German Oberfuhrer comes to town with a horrifying agenda for the residents of the small village.

Murphy’s characters are amazing. She tells her story not only through the eyes of Hansel and Gretel, but also though Magda, the father, the stepmother, villagers, partisans, and the Germans. Throughout the story run the themes of survival, sacrifice, and remembering your true self, in spite of the horror around you.