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Random words, pictures and thoughts of one who always wishes to be on the mind's road to discovery!

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Connecticut River Valley, New England, United States

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Review: The Silent Patient

The Silent PatientThe Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alicia Berenson murdered her husband; she shot him in the head multiple times with a shotgun. That was six years ago and she has resided at a Home for mental patients, The Grove, ever since the trial. Alicia was found covered in blood standing in front of a strange painting she'd completed after the murder. She was an artist and the painting was to be the last " word " she'd spoken. She said nothing when arrested, nothing during the trial that resulted in a plea of diminished responsibility and her confinement at the Grove, and nothing since that commitment.

A young psychotherapist, Theo Faber, was fascinated by the press coverage of the murder and even went to the gallery in which her final painting was exhibited. The story and the painting haunted him and he wished he could meet its artist but he was working at another institution. But as chance would have it, a position opened at The Grove and Theo applied and was hired. At last, he would have an opportunity to try to treat the silent Alicia. Her background resonated with him, since his childhood and hers had some similarities that he wished to explore.

And so begins the interaction between patient and therapist, which becomes ever more intense and personal. Disturbing really and I felt a nagging feeling that there was more than this random connection between the two. When the twist is revealed, it is a shock on the one hand and somehow not surprising on another. The revelations of Alicia's background and her relationships as well as the story of Theo's life both keep the reader going, trying to figure out whether or not Alicia killed Gabriel. If she did, why? He was the love of her life and that life seemed so perfect. If she didn't, then who did and why? But even more confounding, why isn't Alicia Berenson speaking??

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Review: The Bandit Queens

The Bandit QueensThe Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having thought the caste system has been outlawed in India, it was surprising to find this tale set in current time. Still, the system is so very confusing, not the basis necessarily, but the strange differences in economic situations that can exist in the various levels--a Brahmin, the highest caste can grow up with no money, starving, dependent upon others, while a Dalit, an untouchable can be quite affluent.

Besides the caste system there are differences in the culture of Muslim Indians and Hindu Indians that are very significant. A Hindu widow for example cannot remarry, is excluded from all celebrations etc while a Muslim woman has great freedom as a widow.

Both of these conditions are significant in the story but of greater importance is the position of women in society. Although they are eligible for loans that men are not, their husbands can steal those funds or the monies the women earn from any small business they might set up with the loans. The men are not to be punished for women and their funds are the possessions of the husbands. Wives can be sexually molested or beaten--if by their husbands there is no punishment and not a great deal of punishment of men not their husbands. Needless to say many women are not content living this way. And sometimes these women take matters into their own hands..

One such woman is Geeta, whose husband disappeared five years before the book begins. His body has never been found but the villagers assume Geeta killed him. In general, she is a loner and is friendless. She does have some leadership qualities and so she has been allowed into one of the loan groups which meets once a month to pay the loan man. It is this group of women who are the focus of the story. As with any group, especially of women, there is jealousy, gossip, cliquish behavior, and in time murder and blackmail. At times, convoluted and dangerous, at others hilariously inept, these women struggle to have a voice and self-determination that the culture and traditions of thousands of years has denied them. In the end, old resentments and past degradations and cruelty are sorted. The village is changed in most cases for the better and the women become a wonderful group of bonobos!

This review is of a copy provided by BookBrowse for discussion on their website.

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Friday, March 8, 2024

Review: Violeta

VioletaVioleta by Isabel Allende
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While not being one of those readers who decides to read books that follow the theme of the month, this one fits March, womens' month, perfectly. Violeta is born in Chile to wealthy parents during the 1920 influenza pandemic. She is pampered and surrounded by loving family, parents, a brother, aunts and a governess whom she adores. There are older siblings as well but they are so much older they are out of the home and not particularly close to her or Jose Antonio, her brother. When the Depression strikes the Del Valle family and her father commits suicide, the rest of them move to a rural area and the home of Miss Taylor's lover's family, the Rivas. Although Jose Antonio is madly in love with Josephine Taylor she is in a relationship with Theresa Rivas. Through the many years covered in this book Jose retains the engagement ring he bought for Miss Taylor.

Which brings us to the length of the story. It covers Violeta life until her death at 100 in 2020, the beginning, as she points out, of yet another pandemic! It is written in the form of a memoir that in time is revealed to be a long letter to Violeta's grandson. Her life as a business woman at a time when women were to be wives and mothers, housekeepers not independently wealthy individuals. She is headstrong and emotional and passionate. Married to a non-Chilean, a German , at a fairly young age. Fabian is madly in love with her but is stoic and unemotional. She is content and expects to be with him until death. That is until julian Bravo comes along and she leaves him for the wild and daring pilot who sweeps her off her feet at first sight.

Theirs is a long involvement, tempetuous, damaging, at times physically abusive which produces two children, a girl, Nieves and a boy, Juan Martin. It is during this time that Violeta becomes more aware of the events occuring in her country and the world. The military juntas of South America, the poverty of her fellow Chileans, the abusive conditions under which some women live, the corruption of government and the rise of organized crime. All of these things we see and hear through the eyes of Violeta, the narrator.

How she reacts to these events. How her children's lives develop and the affects those developments have on her. The birth of her grandson, the evolution of her relationship with Bravo, the new lovers who enter her life as she ages--all of these are revealed. And in the end her loss as time goes on of her family members and friends, her development of a fund for abused women, her philanthropy and her devotion to Camilo, her grandson to whom this letter is written. It is a long letter about a long life but it is a wonderful life, a typical life--there is love, hate, loss, mistakes, revenge, devotion, success and failure--and the longer it goes on the more is lost until in the end, there is just Violeta on her deathbed, Camilo tending her along with one last member of the Rivas household,, the granddaughter of the original housekeeper.

Loved it all--the history, the characters, and Violeta, only 20 years older than me. I felt as though I'd moved into her skin there was so much of her I could relate to. At times I wanted to pull the reins and stop her taking a path I knew would be dangerous or foolhardy, but I could not. I had to let the story go, shaking my head either in sorrow or else with laughter because I'd been as foolish as she at times. The book is wonderful for anyone to read but, I think, will be most appealing to women of a certain age because it will not be so much history of another time as a story of a time through which they have lived.

Theirs is

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Monday, March 4, 2024

Review: G is for Gumshoe

G is for Gumshoe  (Kinsey Millhone Mystery #7)G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While being a PI can be fun it can also be quite dangerous, especially when one of your investigations results in jail time for the subject and he puts out a hit on you. While working on her new case, finding the elderly mother of her client, the hitman comes uncomfortably close to fulfilling his contract. Though it isn't her style, Kinsey is sufficiently cowed that she contacts another PI, with whom she's worked in the past, to be her bodyguard.

Dietz is a good bodyguard, but his constant presence and control of her environment and movements drives the independent Kinsey crazy. I doesn't get any easier when the two find themselves attracted to each other in a less than professional way.

There is a H is for Homicide, so everything works out fairly well in the end.

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Monday, February 26, 2024

Review: The 6:20 Man

The 6:20 ManThe 6:20 Man by David Baldacci
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not sure if I've read any Baldacci before but have wanted to so picked this one up because of its setting rather than anything else. Nothing like a commuter train into the City at an ungodly hour in the morning. Hopefully, not too many of the riders are former Army Rangers who are working in Wall St as a self imposed penance for an act not particularly becoming for an Officer and a Gentleman. More logically than Sex and the City or Friends, Travis Devine, is sharing a townhouse in Mt Kisco rather than a Manhattan roomy apartment and his salary barely covers the rent, food and train fare so his social life is not very exciting.

With the death of an office colleague with whom he had a one night stand, that rather mundane life is going to get much more stimulating. He has received a rather strange email telling him of the woman's death. No one else has gotten such a personal notification and the sender's address is strange looking. Next thing he knows Travis is being personally approached by detectives at his station in Mt Kisco, their interest in him rather intense. Do they suspect him of her murder?

Before long he is further approached by someone who appears to be a Fed and knows all about Travis' military history. Threatened with prosecution and probable jail sentence, Travis agrees to get some information about the financial institution where he and the deceased worked together as analysts. The the background info he uncovers is convoluted and confusing and the deaths keep mounting up. What is going on and how is he going to keep himself from being among the dead?

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Friday, February 23, 2024

Review: The Black Book

The Black Book (Inspector Rebus, #5)The Black Book by Ian Rankin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Loved John Hannah in the series, did not like Stott, his replacement because he was too old for my mental image of Rebus and am looking forward to the new series, though this guy seems too young.

If ever I go to Edinburgh I will forever be thinking of all the nefarious underworld goings on and never feel safe in any pub or restaurant. The place is teeming with horrible people who speak in a dialect I'll never understand. As a matter of fact, Hannah gave me problems in the program--thank goodness for cc or I'd be truly lost. And truly lost is what Ian Rankin keeps his readers. Rebus is constantly running all over town and environs and never seems to get enough pieces to any puzzle he's trying to solve. What he does learn at any turn makes me feel as though I'm doing a jigsaw but it isn't the one this bit belongs to and I hate jigsaw puzzles! But, the characters and places are so intriguing and Rebus, himself so Columbo-like, that I keep subjecting myself to this torture.

In the end, the result is always satisfactory but I feel so exhausted I swear i'm not going to read the next one, until I do. Sigh

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Review: Origin in Death

Origin in Death (In Death, #21)Origin in Death by J.D. Robb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

2059 New York City--though only 35 years from now, hoping this book is not what our future holds. Between the threat of AI creating a " reality " difficult to discern, the idea of Quiet Birth is enough to make me happy that I can't last that long at my age. Does make me worry about what the future holds for our children, though. Must admit, I like a lot of the automatic driving vehicles that would allow me to get around more easily than current vehicles do at my age.

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