Light From Other Stars by Erika Swyler

A special thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA/Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It is 1986 and eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. Her father, Theo, is a scientist who has recently been laid off from his job at NASA. Theo is being consumed by an idea of his own making as a result of never getting over the loss of his newborn son—he has invented something that will alter time.

This is a story of women, of fathers and daughters, and of sacrifice.

I've been a fan of Swyler's writing since reviewing The Mermaid Girl, which is the prequel to The Book of Speculation. While I enjoyed the exploration of the father-daughter relationship, this story missed the mark. I feel party responsible for the mediocrity I felt while reading this book because I didn't realize it was science fiction. That's not a criticism of the genre, it is just simply not for me and had I realized this, I would not have requested the book.

The story is framed in two time periods—at the time of the Challenger explosion and then in the future. It was the futuristic timeline/time in space that was disengaging and I was happy to be immersed in the earlier timeline.

What I did enjoy was the writing, there is no doubt that Swyler is a talented author, but I felt bogged down by the terminology and high level of detail and therefore was emotionally disconnected.

ERIKA SWYLER is a graduate of New York University. She is a writer and playwright whose work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies. Born and raised on Long Island's north shore, Erika is also a baker, photographer and blogger.

I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice

A special thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This rambling, manic at times, narrative is a raw and honest book about living with MND (here in Canada known as ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—or Lou Gehrig's disease).  Ruth Fitzmaurice's filmmaker husband, Simon, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2008.  He is wheelchair-bound, not able to move or breathe on his own, and can only communicate through the use of an eye gaze computer.  It is these eyes that Ruth uses as the windows in which to find her husband—she knows he is still in there even though he can't speak to her, or touch her.  

Ruth and Simon are parents to five children, all under the age of ten.  As if that weren't chaos enough, there is a constant parade of nurses that come and go 24 hours a day, and a gaggle of pets including an aggressive basset hound.  One of the many challenges Ruth faces is to find any sort of peace in the chaos, any moment of stillness and calm to keep her sane and grounded.  She craves connections, whether it be to her "Tragic Wives' Swimming Club", or to her favourite nurse, Marian.  Human connection is so important to survival, especially in times of tragedy.

Fitzmaurice doesn't use any type of timeline, or write in any kind of order.  Instead, she chunks her  staccato type narrative into mini essays.  To be honest, it took me a while to get into her groove,  there are times where she is all over the place and scattered and it feels like she has simply taken every thought in her head and put it on the page in order to make sense of her life.  While this type of writing doesn't appeal to everyone, it works for this book.  This memoir is raw, honest and heartbreaking, while at the same time showing the beauty of love.  It inspires, and demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit.  Ruth is unabashedly open with her thoughts and feelings and I think she is incredibly brave to bare her life in this way.  

The Best of Us: A Memoir by Joyce Maynard

A special thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Joyce Maynard, author and journalist, discovers true love later in life.  Before she met Jim, who we are told several times, has a great head of hair—I imagine Patrick Dempsey gets told this a lot too—Maynard believes she is done with marriage.  She is fiercely independent, but open to companionship and ends up realizing that Jim is more than a companion, he is her partner.

The couple has a whirlwind romance, and marry, only to have their years together cut tragically short.  Jim is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just after they celebrate their first year of marriage.  Raw, honest, and heartbreaking, Maynard doesn't shy away from sharing the ups and downs of marriage with the added strain of a terminal illness.  She courageously writes about Jim's final days—her writing is beautiful and reminds us that love is fleeting, as is time, and that both are a gift to the heart.