Patron Saint of Liars

Patron Saint of Liars

For anyone who has ever wondered about the complexities of self awareness…. For anyone who has a strained mother/daughter relationship… for anyone who has waited for a sign from God…. Anne Patchet has written Patron Saint of Liars for you.

The book tells the story, in three parts with three connected narrators, of Rose a pregnant woman who leaves her first husband, Son, her second husband and chosen father of her daughter, and Ceclie, the unwanted but much loved daughter who is raised partly by a Catholic home for unwed mothers.

At its core, it is a story of love and how love can be difficult to give and sometimes even more difficult to receive. The characters are vivid and real. The pace is perfect., but perhaps the best part of the book is the subtle lesson it teaches about perspective.

For the first third, we are in Rose’s head as she leaves her husband and drives herself to the Catholic home for unwed mothers. Although she sounds like an unsympathetic character, she isn’t. Her pain and frustration are understandable, at least on the surface, and we are rooting for her and her untapped potential.

But then things change. The second portion is Son’s voice and it is his responses to Rose, now totally cut off from the reader in terms of emotion, that we identify with. We, as son… and especially later as Cecile, don’t understand Roses’ actions. We can’t even begin to comprehend her because we aren’t her anymore. we are the oribitng planets that revolve around her.

If there was ever a subtext about accepting that you don’t know a person until you have walked in their shoes (or, to be more precise, lived in their narration head) it is in this book and it is done beautifully.

Again, Patron Saint of Liars tells an interesting story that speaks to every woman who might feel alienated from her mother… or herself. Well written and strangely intimae, this book will stay with you.

The Gates

Strap in for a blow by blow of the opening scene followed by a review of the pilot (available on Hulu.com)

The Hulu info by the way is succinct: The Monohan family moves into a new home in an exclusive community.

Well.. with a catch like that… Zzzzzz

No, I’m sure that this new drama from ABC will be exciting and new! Let’s give it a chance!

We open on a dark big wall that is protecting all the joys of suburbia. There is a young white couple running, happy little white kids with lemonade, picnicking, washing cars, etc. Then, a dark haired woman is in her garden clipping roses (no hat, no sunglasses, and no ponytail to obscure her beauty and charmed unrealistic pruning). She calls out to a pouty little girl named Emily that she (dark haired Rose Trimmer) has told her (Emily of the pouty face) not to skateboard without a helmet. Rose Trimmer has an accent.

Emily steps off her skateboard and it rolls away into the path of a car being driven by White Guy On Cell Phone complaining about his wife.

Rose Trimmer runs after Emily screaming but Emily ignores her and then stands frozen in the car’s path. Cell Phone Man slams on the brakes and then crashes.

Rose Trimmer grabs the apologetic Emily and after hugging her checks openmouthed on Cell Phone guy who has a nasty cut and a face full of blood.

Carpool Mom pulls up to pick up Emily and despite her obvious and over acted misgivings, Rose Trimmer aka Mom lets Emily go to school.

The skateboard is forgotten as Emily climbs into the minivan and, not wasting a second, Rose trimmer Mommy invites bloody Cell Phone man inside.

Rose Trimmer gets all chatty with our Contractor Cell Phone man (so maybe it wasn’t his wife he was complaining about). Her second question to him involves her notifying his wife? Girlfriend? He has neither and in fact he says that this (her washing his face) might be the closest he has been to a woman all year. Instead of standing up and kicking him out for being creepy, she continues to wash his face and tries to reassure him.

“I’m sure it will just be a mater of time.”

“I hope so,” he stares at her getting creepier by the second, “Not sure how much longer I can wait.”

Again, she isn’t creeped out but does tell him that she is married and then promptly gets a bit weird about the blood on the cotton balls. She pulls herself from staring at the disgusting things and has the energy to banter with him a bit more. Mixed Signal City.

Apparently the bloody cotton balls changed her mind because suddenly her husband is out of town and they are kissing… she leads him into the kitchen she has a thing for kitchens, and they are making out hard core before I start to wonder if this is going to be a vampire show… and then…

Yep. Teeth, Biting. Shoulder Clutching. Bleeding him over the stopped up kitchen sink.

Roll credits.



Sigh. I sort of don’t want to bother. I mean.. another vampire show? This one with its own mythos (obviously the sun isn’t an issue for Rose Trimmer) and pitfalls. I like the vampire stuff… but… honestly, isn’t mass culture getting a bit blood boated by now?

Also, there are a LOT of white people in this show. Like... everyone.

I digress.

The show is about a family moving into a gated community. Well okay. But…

The show is actually about the cast of characters in the gated community. There are the vampires, but somehow they are a bit human. There are the cliché characters but they somehow seem well cast. There is the set up for down the road reveals that actually look intriguing.

And it is more than vampires. There are werewolves and witches (dueling witches pretending to be herbalist holistic healers!) and of course there is teen angst and marital strife, and small town nosey neighbors.

I wish there was a bit more humor… the show could suffer from taking itself too seriously, but on the whole it is engaging, interesting, and moderatly entertaining.

I’ll keep watching.

The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson (Series)

The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson (Series)
by Louise Rennison







Every now and then you want to read something light and fluffy: brain candy.

The next time this urge hits you, reach for the highly entertaining Georgia Nicolson series.

These books are the “diary” of a fourteen year old English girl who’s major problems include make up, fashion, dreaming over Sex Gods, and dealing with the embarrassment of her crazy family.

I know… it sounds shallow, predictable, and repetitive. Well, it is. But it is also funny, engaging, fast to read, and above all else plain old fun. Most of the humor comes from a delightful mix of British pop culture and jargon with the misadventures of the freakishly unique Georgia. It isn’t every fourteen year old girl who will go to a costume party dressed as a stuffed olive complete with face and neck painted red.

If the plots sometimes take forever to progress, well, we can forgive it. If the same themes of “he loves me, he loves me not” persist book after book, well again… forgivable. Wasn’t that what being a teenager was all about?

I have read the first 7 of the books and found them to be fun just before bed light reading, (an essential night cap after an evening of, say, Dexter) and I highly recommend them as frivolous fluffy brain candy of the highest order.

A Reliable Wife

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick


Set in the harsh Wisconsin winter, entrenched in the borderline insanity of the town, and taking place just after the turn of the last century, A Reliable Wife is a story that refuses to be pigeonholed. Part romance, part mystery, part over zealous literary symbolic foray into the idea of good, evil, and forgiveness, the story moves through time and space almost effortlessly.

There is particular attention paid by author Goolrick to character development. He straddles the line of telling you just enough to make you care but not too much to keep you from truly knowing… and in this way the twists, when they come, are startling and also totally foreseeable. Through the rampant use of flashbacks (sometimes bordering on too much) Goolrick invites the reader into the hearts and minds of both husband and wife in this almost epic story of a mail order bride with a dark past and the haunted husband who has many secrets of his own.

In the end, it all comes down to the story… and despite the occasional lull in action or redundant emotional plea, this book does indeed have a gripping, moving, and highly interesting story. The excessive descriptions will delight the detail-oriented reader while the themes of love and loss will enamor the more romantic at heart big picture types.

A good title for book clubs or drowsy summer reading, a Reliable Wife will make you cherish what you have and remind you that, thankfully, winter doesn’t last forever… even in Wisconsin.

Cutting For Stone

Cutting For Stone
By Abraham Verghese



This novel takes the idea of being ambitious to a whole new level. I don’t mean the characters are driven by ambition in a new and special way (although that could certainly be said) but rather that author Abraham Verghese attempts to tell several stories in one novel.

There are multiple love stories that interweave, there is the core story of the lives of twins Shiva and Marion, there is the historical story of emperors, coups, and political strife in Ethiopia, there are medical journeys through time, there is the tale of parental struggle, and there is the universal story of love lost and found.

No wonder the book is 658 pages.

I think Verghese does a marvelous job in telling each of these stories, in giving each tale the breath and weight it deserved, in weaving them all together in an unforgettable tapestry.

If at times the story seems to take its dear sweet time to get where we hope and dread it s going, well, that is probably intentional. That is part of growing up. That is part of medical advances. That is part of life.

Verghese does a marvelous job of creating characters who are distinct yet shockingly familiar. The traits that make us love Hema and Ghosh, that make us cheer Marion on and wonder about Shiva’s moral compass are artfully portrayed. The characters become real in a very tangible way, flaws and disappointments intact.

Cutting For Stone tells the story of the complex tragic love of an Indian nun and a troubled British doctor. From their union comes the twins who are raised by surrogate parents. Told from the point of view of the first born twin Marion, the novel moves back and forth in time showing us how the small choices of generations before can impact our lives and the lives of others in the future. Set in Ethiopia but spanning India, Africa, and America, the story unfolds and then unfolds again. There are layers here.. layers of beauty, layers of connection, layers of betrayal, layers of love.

With surgical precision Abraham Verghese has found a way to tell a beautiful and haunting story.

This book is well worth the invested time and the occasional slump in plot momentum, and I highly recommend it.

Little Bee

Little Bee by Chris Cleave


I was a bit wary of the book when I started it. About half way though I found that I was really really enjoying it. Towards the end I had retreated to my state of wariness, and upon completion I was filled with the sentiment that can only be described as “frustration.”

The book is about a Nigerian refugee in England. The book is about an English woman having a mid life crisis. The book is about loss, both the tangible loss of family and fingers and the intangible such as sense of self and pride. The book is about how we sometimes cling to illusions of safety, of innocence, or, in the case of the four year old lynch pin, our Batman costume.

The prose is well crafted, the narration is sometimes clunky but well intentioned, and the plot mechanics work until they simply don’t. But that, I have been told, is life. We don’t always get a Hollywood ending and in truth looking for one from this novel would be a colossal mistake.

The best parts about this novel were the two voices that wove together a complex story. Cleave shines in his ability to create such dynamic and believable characters. Like real people, they are flawed but they are also beautiful in their own ways. They are not soon forgotten.

I would recommend this book for the poetic of mind and the soft of heart. Weaving together dark comedy and universal truths, Cleave has created a story that is defiantly worth reading.

Past Life

Of all the crap…

I mean, I live in California. In Santa Cruz. I like sci-fi and fantasy. I have seen plenty of far fetched lame plot devices and things that make you go “what the…?”

But this? This is just crap.

The promo is set to the sound of a defibrillator machine for ambiance… the words are sort of floaty…

“Have you ever had Déjà vu? And thought it was something more? Maybe it was.”

Voice over: She solves crimes that put souls to rest!

Yep. Welcome to Past Life,



...the new crime procedural with the shtick of the crime solvers being Psycho…. Therapists and a washed up has been “cowboy” detective who use Regression Therapy to solve murders. Apparently, as the “doctor” tells us, Reincarnation is real. We all carry around the memories of our past lives and sometimes, due to trauma or plot convention we regress and experience these memories. At that point it becomes up to her to use triggers and forceful staring to get you continue to flash back so that they can investigate the ‘clues” and thus solve the mystery.

That is premise of the show.

I kid you not.

They canceled Firefly, Pushing Daisies, Dollhouse, and Defying Gravity…. And we get this. (Not a shock, the show is on FOX… I am still not sure how a skeptical medical show like House managed to make it on this network that is so obviously catering to the vaccines cause autism and homeopathy is so super reals!)

Here’s the thing. Shows like Fringe and Warehouse 13 are silly. They know they are silly. They deal with things that are obviously silly like enchanted combs and telepathy. They are harmless.

But crap like this? Crap like this feed on the general public’s appetite for reasons to distrust science in the name of pseudoscience. Regression therapy to deal with your tortured reincarnated soul? Give me a break.

The pilot introduces us to Dr. McGinn (doctor of what we aren’t ever told), her horrible fake accent, and her sidekick the skeptical (but for how long?) former detective Whatley. There is also a 14 year old boy who is the reincarnation of a murder victim. We get just enough exposition to make us queasy and then we get the story which is almost unwatchable.

I thought about recapping the episode but honestly by the opening credits I was feeling overwhelmed with nausea so instead here are a few of the best and worst moments of the show.

Read Watch if you can stomach it, and Judge for yourself.

Lines like “The clues are there, you just have to know where to look.” Reek of both poor writing and confirmation bias.

Classic bad moment: Oh no, the kid has gone missing. Let’s go to his room. Hey look his friend is IMing him right now! What a great coincidence… the friend says ‘What up where r u? Zachary park?” because that makes sense. If you IM someone (a message sent to their computer) and they don’t answer you are going to start guessing random places… because they will, what answer? Of course the kid is in Zachary park. And of course he has had some sort of psychotic break, errr, I mean Regression Moment.

Another classic bad moment: The ‘ooo’ moment of the fact that the kid is actually the reincarnation of… A Little GIRL!

“It’s a Texas thang [her insistence on driving in the city], trucks, guns and the death penalty.” Several Texans just hung their head in shame. And that’s saying something. Apparently Texans also have bad taste in jewelry and are bossy about their coffee.

Ahhhhh skeptical detective man is also superstitious man who believes in bad luck. But not in coincidences. (also a widower, but I’m sure that is just a shameless eventual plot moment right?) This show makes my brain hurt.

“Husbands are like Jesus, just another white man telling me what to do” said without a trace of irony by a rich southern white woman.

The intuitive leap of “The clue is referencing a tall building with a red light on it. Which could be lots of places in the city we are in, but not that many places in say… that city over there.”

The murdered girl was killed a month before our Regression driven teen boy was born….. So this show has now not only decided that Reincarnation is real, but that recycled souls can implant themselves into fetuses not at the moment of conception…. But rather at some point before birth. I guess that straddles the abortion line pretty well wouldn’t you say? It has a recycled soul… at X weeks! Hazah!

“he remembers being murdered.” Point of interest. If you are killed you therefore have no future memories… right? You would have the memories up until the point where everything goes black. But if you never wake up as an angel and see your body or end up talking to St. Peter, how would you actually know you had died? Wouldn’t you need a point of contrast? I was alive, now I am dead? Is the soul of the victim self aware and free loading off the teen? Am I the only one who thinks this doesn’t make any sense?

By the way, the FBI vouches for our intrepid Dr. Of course they do.

“The best way to deal with a skeptic is to rip the band aide off, tell ‘em who we are right up front.” I would counter that the best way to deal with a skeptic is with proof but since I have a feeling that this show is going to actually provide us with some “proof” I’ll hold my tongue.

Also, too many people with beautiful blue eyes. Come on folks. Where are all the attractive brown eyed people?

We won’t worry about things like evidence for our warrents… the kid psychic mumbled about a boat name and then we found a guy who owns a boat with that name… he must be our killer! Guess what. In this world, he is indeed the killer.

We don’t see the ensuing court case. Because no judge in their right mind would allow it and no jury even out of their minds would buy it (I hope). But since this is a crime procedural that is more concerned with being edgy and unique due to schtick, we aren’t really surprised.

At 38 minutes our skeptic has officially become a believer. Because…. That’s how skepticism works. We get distracted by the shiny and forget our critical thinking skills. Gah!

And in response to his fumbling ‘aww gee, I guess I have to believe now” bit her response is the classic condescending: “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening.” She is going to quote Einstein as a way of validating pseudoscience.

Thankfully the credits rolled pretty soon after that.



Want to see for yourself? Episodes are available for free at Fox.com and hulu.com