The Two-Family House: A Novel by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Description
"Brooklyn, 1947: in the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear and their once deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost but not quite wins.
From debut novelist Lynda Cohen Loigman comes The Two-Family House, a moving family saga filled with heart, emotion, longing, love, and mystery."

This is the story of Helen and Rose, sisters-in-law and best friends raising their families and sharing their lives together. Helen has the upstairs apartment with her husband Abe and is raising a house full of boys.

Rose has the downstairs with her husband Mort and their daughters.
This struck a chord with me, as when my husband and I were first married we lived for 5 years in a 2 family house and had the upstairs. Downstairs were my parents and sisters. I felt the author quite accurately portrayed the feeling of being one big happy family and yet still wanting your own space with your own family.

Though Abe and Mort are brothers they are very different and not as close as Helen and Rose. They own a business together and work together each day but don't share much else in common. Their approach to raising children is quite different, their marriages are quite different, Mort is more cold and less demonstrative, sometimes cruel. Abe is more warm and affectionate. Rose often feels that things would be different if she had born a son instead of only daughters... Helen sometimes feels overwhelmed with her house full of boisterous boys and wishes she had a daughter to talk and laugh and share with, but they each try to make the best of things in their own way, and they could not love each other more if they were sisters by blood and not only marriage.

Sadly, choices that they make leads to a rift in their relationship. Things they thought they could live with become impossible to bear. Tragedy tears them further apart. I don't want to give away too much, but I truly felt for these characters, I sympathized, I empathized and I felt their heartbreak.
I am impressed with author Lynda Cohen Loigman and will most definitely be keeping an eye out for her future work.

I received an advance copy for review.

The Dinner By Herman Koch

Description

"It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
     Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.
     Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy"

 

The description made me want to read this book, but while the story held my interest I found it difficult to connect with any of the characters or empathize with any of their decisions. There was not so much a "tragedy" that any one was faced with nor did it make me wonder what I myself would do if faced with such an impossible "tragedy" The characters were too unreal. The plot was too implausible and the narrative too often stated "I'm not going to tell you" As in the wife is hospitalized but "I'm not going to tell you why" She had multiple surgeries but "I'm not going to tell you" what they were. One character has a mental illness of some sort but "I'm not going to tell you" what it is (since no such condition exists) oh and this illness could have been diagnosed before birth with an amnio but "I'm not going to tell you"   This was less a story of how far you would go to protect those you love and more a story of how far you would dig yourself into a deeper hole along with someone who was never in a million years going to be able to get away with what they've done.

 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for review

 

About Herman Koch

HERMAN KOCH is the author of eight novels and three collections of short stories. The Dinner, his sixth novel, has been published in forty countries and was an international bestseller. He currently lives in Amsterdam

 

more info

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/221991/the-dinner-by-herman-koch/

 

The Curse of Crow Hollow by Billy Coffey

Description
"With the “profound sense of Southern spirituality” he is known for (Publishers Weekly), Billy Coffey draws us into a town where good and evil—and myth and reality—intertwine in unexpected ways.
Everyone in Crow Hollow knows of Alvaretta Graves, the old widow who lives in the mountain. Many call her a witch; others whisper she’s insane. Everyone agrees the vengeance Alvaretta swore at her husband’s death hovers over them all. That vengeance awakens when teenagers stumble upon Alvaretta’s cabin, incurring her curse. Now a sickness moves through the Hollow. Rumors swirl that Stu Graves has risen for revenge. And the people of Crow Hollow are left to confront not only the darkness that lives on the mountain, but the darkness that lives within themselves."

I fell in love with this book! The Curse of Crow Hollow is a spine tingling story related to you slowly through a folksy down home narrative that made me feel I was a trusted friend sitting around a spooky campfire being let in on a secret.

It is a story of superstition, suspicion, mob mentality oh and lets not forget the witch! Is she or isn't she? Can she really curse a whole town or is it all in their own minds like some mass hysteria? When a birthday party gone wrong leads a group of teens to the witch's door long hidden secrets make their way to the light and evil can live not just in a witch's shack but in the hearts of men.

I received an advance copy for review.

The Island Of Worthy Boys By Connie Hertzberg Mayo

Description
"In 1889, the Boston Farm School didn’t accept boys with any sort of criminal record. Which made it the perfect place for two boys who accidentally killed someone to hide.

Charles has been living alone on the streets of Boston for the last two of his twelve years. Aidan’s mom can’t stay sober enough to keep her job. When the boys team up, Charles teaches Aidan the art of rolling drunks in the saloon and brothel district, and life starts to look up―until a robbery goes horribly wrong one night and they need to leave the city or risk arrest. When the boys con their way into The Boston Farm School―located on an island one mile out in Boston Harbor―they think they’ve cheated fate. But the Superintendent is obsessed with keeping the bad element out of his school, and as both their story and their friendship start to splinter, Charles and Aidan discover they are not as far from the law as they had hoped."  

This was an engaging, beautifully written work of historical fiction. While the main characters Charles and Aidan are fictitious, Boston Asylum and Farm School for Indigent Boys did actually exist as does Thompson Island MA.
Charles and Aidan meet quite by accident and although Charles is wary of people and used to being alone the two quickly become the best of friends. They are each suffering through their own hard times and their friendship is only solidified when things take a turn for the worse. I was totally immersed in this story and couldn't put it down.

I received an advance copy in exchange for review