Book Review: Perigee Moon – by Lynn Schneider

When I started doing reviews, I only wanted to get the word out about the quality indie books I found. It was a natural that I would read our fellow Boomers and Books stories, but I did not intend to review every one of them. What a delight then, when I opened a book by the last of our author members I had not read and knew from the first paragraph I would enjoy it.

In Perigee Moon, our hero, Luke, is just the sort of decent, likeable guy who should end up married to a nice girl and they have a nice family and live happily ever after. He should do that, but he doesn’t. Instead a girl who is not very nice gets her hooks into him and won’t let go. She uses her feminine wiles to catch him up in her dream, tricking him into marriage. Her dream becomes his nightmare and he finds himself at middle age wondering how it is he has allowed himself to come so far away from who he is.

Having not led a conventional life with just one job or one career for thirty or so years, I have often admired those who can do that. This book makes me glad of my choices, well chronicling a nice guy plodding along and doing the jobs expected of him, producing three kids and a dog, a job in IT he no longer cares for, and a dead marriage.

Luke begins escaping by taking up astronomy. He buys a telescope, walking late at night, gazing at the moon and stars and somehow finding meaning in them. One night he decides to stay up and watch a Perigee moon. A Perigee full moon appears much bigger than a normal full moon and this is a Supermoon, an irregular phenomenon with occasionally over a decade between occurrences. He asks his wife to join him, knowing she would not but hoping for it anyway.

That night something changes in Luke and he resolves it is time to end the marriage. But as much as the reader is cheering him on and would like to see him take immediate action, indeed sometimes shouts at him to grow a pair already, he determines he will wait until his youngest daughter leaves home. He begins studying the deep philosophical questions and that gets him through the remaining years.

When the break does finally come, Luke goes on for a while in his dead-end job until one day he finally snaps and just packs up and leaves. He falls into a new job which keeps him outside and working with his hands and slowly he begins to pick up the pieces of his life.

Throughout the book, Luke has been thinking back to a girl from school named Abby he once had a crush on; star-crossed lovers who seem always destined to be apart. He finally meets up with her at a school reunion and discovers the spark is still there. But his ex has broken up with her latest fling, and his precious youngest daughter has always harbored thoughts of her parents reuniting. She encourages the ex to reunite with Luke. Luke is conflicted.

You will have to read the book (and I highly recommend you do), to discover if Luke finally ‘grows a pair’, or will he drift back into old habits because he wants to please his daughter and it would be the easy thing to do…

The author has a unique writing style all her own which I rather enjoyed. The first half of the book plods along, paralleling the pace of the first half of Luke’s life, and is written in third person, past tense. The last half flows smoothly into third person, present tense. This artifice worked very well for the story.

This is the second book in a row I read which was written by a woman with a male lead, not an easy feat but well done in both cases. Kudos to the author.

All in all a satisfying coming-of-middle-age Boomer book which would be enjoyed by all ages.

Review: I.O.U. Sex – by Sandra Nachlinger and Sandra Allen

 What fun! Two good friends from school writing a book together about three good friends from school who are all at a crossroads in their lives and cook up a zany idea to look up their old boyfriends.

The title suggests a good ole sex-filled Chick Lit story.

There is alcohol, sex and romance involved. But this book is so much more than that. It is a story about the lives of three aging women. Each of them must face something within themselves that is holding them back from moving forward in some way.

The story is written seamlessly, not an easy feat. Our three main characters are likeable and fully fleshed out, and the secondary characters too are nicely developed. Dialogue is good; I loved all the ‘southern speak’ and the attendant little sayings. These people are real and believable; they are feisty and flawed, reserved and determined, lonely and primed. The guys are white knights in a steadfast, empowering way. The road is bumpy but conflicts are resolved with mutual strength.

The pace is perfect, picking up about half way into the story, with just the right light touch. To add to the fun, two of the friends pull off a caper on an old boyfriend who has turned out less than reputable.

Lately, I have found a few novels that are fun and romantic but not the pieces of fluff we have come to associate with romances. Look out, twenty-somethings, I believe we Boomers have invented an entirely new romance genre. I want more, and I bet you will too…

Emily Dickinson: Beyond the Myth – by Patricia Sierra

I picked this book up because I met the author on a forum and found her to be intelligent and witty. That I would enjoy her writing was a given, and I was not disappointed.

There was a lot of intelligence in the book; Emily seemed to live in her mind. Alas her wit lived there too. But that did not deter from the enjoyment of reading it.

I was immediately drawn into the story of Emily Dickinson through beautiful, thoughtful prose which could have been written by Emily herself – but were not. Even though this was a work of fiction and I knew the words were not Emily’s own, I never once faltered in the feeling it was her speaking to us. That’s how good it was.

The world knows Emily as a loner, but Sierra delves deep into her world and convinces the reader (whom Emily intimately invites in, in the beginning pages) that she was a spirited and fascinating creature who attracted the intelligentsia of both genders into her life and carried on close relationships with them; albeit mostly from afar. The skill with which this was done was remarkable.

We see many sides of Emily. Her kin were paramount to her, with the kind of co-dependency one might expect from a family who live in the same house all their lives, or at least right next door, as with her brother. Yet they all seemed to live separate lives. She was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many of her relationships were of the philosophical type. The idea of life after death was a comfort to her.

In the end we come to like Emily, though sometimes we have to shake our heads at her. How she comes to love a man who is charming but shows not the least bit of romantic interest in her is beyond understanding, but we chalk it up to the times – and to the idea that it suited her very well.

The book is literary fiction at its best, skillfully written and enchanting enough to keep one interested far longer than might have been expected.

I leave you with a quote from the book which sums up the author’s writing: “Colonel Higginson compared the preparation of good writing to the baking of good bread. He said that we must work in all the elements of the composition until they form a cohesive whole, the way the housewife at her bread board gradually kneads in all the outlying bits of dough, forming one round mass. Straggling footnotes and loose ends are not allowed.”

The author must be a very good bread maker indeed…

Recommended for all ages.