The Infinite Tides by Christian Kiefer

The Infinite Tides: A Novel

The premise of this book is a great one. Keith Corcoran spent all his life working for his ambition of becoming astronaut and just as he makes it, he loses his family. Keith is an astronaut and is physically in space when he hears his teenage daughter has died in a car accident. Before he can get home he learns his wife has decided to leave him. The story is that of Keith arriving home to an empty house, no wife or child and very little furniture.

The book is one of grief, and uncertainty. When he heard about his daughter’s death he started getting really bad headaches, which continued when he came back to earth. So through the book he is uncertain if he can return to his job or not.

Keith becomes friends with two of his neighbors and the plot involves his relationships with these people as well as memories from his past. 

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still Alice

Alice is 50 and is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. 

The book was written by Lisa Genova, who has worked with Alzheimer's patients, and there is a lot of information throughout the book. In fact, if you or a loved one were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, this would be a good informative book to read, and I'm sure that was the author's plan when writing the book. There is a lot of information in fiction form without it being a textbook.

I related to Alice, a Harvard lecturer and mother of grown children. I felt I knew her from page one. Her life was full and the diagnosis was sudden, and then while reading the book we are treated to an increase in the symptoms of the disease. 

I felt so sorry for her when she went out for her usual jog and got lost on her way home, or when she couldn't find her blackberry and another family member found it in the freezer. We are invited in to the life of the family, which isn't a picture perfect family as in other books, but real with its own family tensions outside of Alice's diagnosis. 

I loved the character of Alice and her stubbornness to fight the illness, and although it was a sad book, enjoyed the book too.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Gargoyle

I read many books and once in a while one book stands out above the rest to be quality literature well written. This is one such book. I was so amazed at the wonderful descriptive passage on the first few pages, that I give the book to my children to read as an example of incredibly well written prose. 

Having said that, the opening of the book is of a horrendous car accident where the hero is horribly badly burned. I enjoyed the description, but not the image of such the author painted in my imagination. The hero (whose name we never learn) was a porn star until his body was wrecked in the fire of a car accident. For most of the book he is in hospital, unable to move, remembering his former life and not wanting a future life. 

Then Marianne Engel appears one day. She tells stories of them together in a former life. Are the stories real, or imagined? That is left to you to decide.

The thing I will say about this book is that is is graphic. One member of our book club gave up reading it because she didn't want to read the details of his life in the porn industry, and the incredible descriptions of his pain while in hospital. But for me, they are the things I remember most. I felt I was inside the head of our hero and thus that is what made the book memorable for me. Marianne adds mystery to the book as to who she is and where she came from. 

Truly an amazing read, if you like that kind of thing. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander

Time travel is the subject of this book. Claire, while on vacation in Scotland, travels from 1945 to 1743 to a much rougher country and people. Treated with suspicion as an outlander, she realizes she must marry James Fraser to survive. I don't want to say much more about the book except that it was published over 20 years ago and people are still reading it. It is the first in a series and most people who read the first book carry on to read the others. 

Me, I didn't care for it. I found the characters to be a little too unrealistic and the premise of time travel to be just an excuse to tell a story in 1743. But most of the people I have spoken to who have read this book, loved it.