Fiela's Child

Fiela's Child

by Dalene Matthee

This is a beautiful novel about a black woman in nineteenth-century rural South Africa and her white foundling son. After several years, the government takes her son from her and he is sent to live with his supposed natural family in another community. It is a very moving story and is absolutely beautifully written. This book certainly gave me a fresh perspective on South African history and race and class relations. It was also an interesting look at the question of what really makes a family and the bonds between mothers and their children. There is a movie version of this book out there, but it is ghastly. It's dubbed from Dutch or something and does not do the story justice at all. Definitely skip it.

Bleak House

Bleak House

by Charles Dickens

I have a confession to make: it took me 3 tries to get through this book. The first try was in college, the second was about 3 years ago. (In my defense, it is well over 800 pages.) Then I watched the wonderful BBC/Masterpiece Theater adaptation of it on TV last year and recently decided to give it another try. I must admit that I enjoyed the book much, much more after having seen the miniseries! How unusual is that? I think that having a sense of where the story was headed helped me to sort through the vast cast of characters and Dickens' sometimes circuitous writing and to really appreciate the brilliance of this book. It really is wonderful after all!

It is the story of a vast and unwieldy lawsuit and of generations of people that are drawn into its treacherous grasp. In the usual Dickens fashion there are tons of fabulous characters and enough separate storylines to comprise at least a dozen novels, so it's hard to post much of a plot summary here.

I highly recommend this book and the miniseries as well. The miniseries is very true to the novel, yet is not able to include a lot of the side characters or stories, so reading the book after watching the series is certainly not redundant. I also think that Esther is one of the most charming narrators in literature and the book is worth reading simply to hear the story in her voice.

Twilight

Twilight

by Stephanie Meyer

I held out on reading this book for a long time. It just sounded so silly. But then my friend Catherine, who has a master's degree in English, runs her own very cool book review site (http://bookclubpresident.blogspot.com/), and is simply a fabulous person, said she liked it. So of course I finally gave in and read it.

When I started reading I was thinking "I can't believe I am reading a book about vampires in high school!" 50 pages later I thought, "I can't believe I am LOVING a book about vampires in high school!" I really did love this book and couldn't put it down. Certainly it is not great literature and Meyer is not exactly a genius of symbolism or a careful crafter of language or anything like that. But the story and characters are great and it is a surprisingly compelling and entertaining book. Even for those of us who like to think we are so far above such things.

Of course I had to immediately rush out and read the sequels. I didn't enjoy book 2, New Moon, quite as much, but I loved book 3, Eclipse. And I can't wait to read the next one. I also love Stephanie Meyer's story on her website about the writing of this book (http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html). Very inspirational for us stay-at-home moms with creative aspirations.

All in all, I highly recommend this book and series. As an added perk, the books so far have been very clean and definitely suitable for teen audiences. I love that!