Harvesting the Heart by Jodic Piccoult

By now I think it’s obvious that one of my favorite authors is Jodi Piccoult.  She has the ability to write the most captivating stories.  I can read her books in a matter of hours if I have the time.  I just LOVE her to pieces.  I just finished 2 of her books, which were both fantastic.

 

 

The first book I read was Harvesting the Heart.  This book tells the story of Paige.  Paige was raised by her father after her mother disappeared when Paige was just 5.  Paige’s father is a very devout Irish Catholic.  When Paige gets pregnant in high school she chooses to abort the baby before her dad finds out about the pregnancy.  After Paige graduates, she leaves her hometown of Chicago.  With no particular destination in mind, she jumps on a bus and heads east.  She ends up in Massachusetts, where she gets a job at a local diner.  While waitressing at the diner, she meets Nick, a young doctor.  Nick and Paige fall in love and quickly get married.  While the first years of their marriage are great, Paige feels pressure to fit into a world that she does not belong.  When Paige finds out she is pregnant, she panics. Nick and she weren’t planning on having children until Nick finished his residency and they had a more dependable income.  When the baby arrives, Paige experiences a bit of post partum depression. She fears that she is an inadequate mother because she didn’t have an example of how a mother should be.  When the baby rolls off of the couch one day and gets a bloody noise, Paige panics. Nick arrives home and sees the blood.  When Nick expresses concern about the accident, Paige feels horrible. She tells Nick she needs some time alone and leaves the house to run a few errands.  The freedom Paige feels while out running errands is so liberating that Paige gets in her car and just keeps driving.  Paige finds herself back in Chicago.  While there, she decides she wants to find her mother.  She hires a PI to help her locate her mother. When Paige finds out that her mother is in North Carolina, she heads out to find some answers as to why her mother left.  When Paige and her mother reconnect, Paige realizes that her mother and her have a lot more in common than Paige initially thought.  After a few months away from Massachusetts, Paige decides to go back home to her husband and baby.  The rest of the book tells the struggle that Paige and Nick face as they try to piece together their lives and marriage.

This story really struck a chord with me.  I think more women suffer from post partum depression than care to admit.  And honestly I don’t blame them. While I haven’t had children yet (and don’t plan to for a few more years) I can imagine that suddenly being completely responsible for another human being can be a stressful experience.  Paige grew up without a mother.  She didn’t have an example for what a mother should be and do.  That must be another overwhelming experience.  I am pretty sure I couldn’t abandon my husband and child for months, but I can understand feeling the need or desire to escape.  While the story of Paige is on the drastic side, I think it is a story that mothers can relate to.  I really enjoyed it. As I was reading I was hoping that Paige would come to her senses and get back to her family. I understood the anger that Nick was feeling towards Paige, but hoped that they would realize why the fell in love with each other and that Nick would take Paige back.  It is another hit for Jodi Piccoult, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise because she is awesome at what she does.

 

Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan

The most recent book I have finished is Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan.   Overall I really enjoyed this book.  It progressed nicely and even though it didn’t end exactly how I wanted it to I still enjoyed it.  There were a couple minor details that I didn’t like, but those details didn’t affect my overall feelings towards the book.

 

Between Here and April starts with the main character, Elizabeth Burns watching the play Medea with her husband Mark.  During the play Elizabeth passes out  after having a “vision” of sorts of her childhood best friend April Cassidy.  After that initial incident during the play, Elizabeth continues to have both physical and mental episodes that she ends up tracing back to her friend April.  She finally goes to a therapist to try and get to the bottom of the situation.  While in one of her sessions, Elizabeth confronts the fact that seemingly out of nowhere her childhood best friend April had vanished, never to return to class again.  Elizabeth had long forgotten about her until 30 years later.  Determined to figure out what had happened to April, Elizabeth uses her journalist background to return to her childhood home to investigate the disappearance of April.  Elizabeth uncovers a newspaper article revealing that April, April’s sister Lily, and April’s mother Adele were killed in a murder-suicide situation.  Elizabeth was determined to learn more, so she speaks with Adele’s sister and neighbor to discover what would have driven Adele to not only kill herself, but to take her 2 young children with her.   Elizabeth discovers that Adele most likely suffered from post-partum depression, which was not acknowledged as a diagnosis at the time of April’s death.   The discovery of what happened to April leads Elizabeth on a self-reflective journey as she realizes that a lot of what Adele, Adele’s mother, and her own mother were feelings that Elizabeth herself had felt after her own 2 daughters were born.

I really enjoyed the self-reflective journey Elizabeth took during her research about what happened to April and Adele.  Sometimes what helps me figure out what I need the most is to focus on someone else.  I think this is what happened to Elizabeth.  She was able to learn more about herself and her family’s needs by discovering the truth about April and Adele.   As I mentioned earlier, there were some minor issues that I wasn’t a fan of.  Elizabeth is visited by an old lover during the book.  I felt like this old lover wasn’t necessarily pertinent to the story, but I could see was Kogan was trying to accomplish by including him in the plot of the story.  I felt that Elizabeth had enough going on in her personal life that having to deal with this lover was a bit excessive.  I was also a bit confused by the end of the story when Elizabeth reads a letter written by April’s father.  I wasn’t sure how  Shep Cassidy had gained access to Elizabeth’s work (please note I am talking about the VERY end of the book, not the initial contact from Shep).  The one last detail I was confused about (which considering I didn’t like the addition of the lover anyways may not be important) is again at the end of the book.  Elizabeth and her family are on vacation in Italy when they come across her old flame’s art.  Elizabeth discovers what has happened to her ex, but the book itself never says exactly what happened.  I actually read that part of the book a couple times to make sure I didn’t overlook something important.  Readers figure out what happened based on context clues, but it is a bit unclear what really happened, unless I still overlooked it, in which case I am stupid J

 

Next on the reading list is Michael Crichton’s book Timeline.  John recommended this to me (and even bought it for me).  Considering John isn’t a big reader, I have to assume this will be a good book. I will also be reading a book for the book club I am pretty sure I am going to attend.  The book they are reading is The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore. I have no idea what this book is about, so I hope to be in for a treat.

Let me know if there are any books you would love for me to take on a test drive for you.  I will give anything a try! 

 

Happy Reading!

 

~Tara