Please Look After Mother

This beautiful book Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin was very moving. An elderly woman becomes separated from her husband at Seoul train station and then is missing. Her family desperately try to find her, putting up flyers and searching places she might be. The story is told in different perspectives firstly in the second person by her elder daughter, then her husband and son and then by the mother herself in the first person. The reader learns about her life through these characters and the sacrifices she made for her family. Those sacrifices were taken for granted at the time she made them. Her family always came first for her. Only now that she is missing does her family appreciate the woman she was and how she influenced their lives. Highly recommended 5/5.

The Girl Who Disappeared Twice

This crime novel The Girl Who Disappeared Twice by Andrea Kane was okay. A 5 year old girl is abducted and a private investigative team join with local police and FBI to try to find her. There is a connection to the disappearance 32 years ago of the girl's mother's sister when she was a similar age. The investigators race to find the reason for both abductions and whether or not they are really connected. It was a fairly good yarn, but didn't like the writing style and some of the characters were annoying. 3/5

A Reliable Wife

I enjoyed reading this "gothic" tale A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. It is set in 1907 rural Wisconsin which has a long and bitter winter. Wealthy Ralph Truitt advertises for a wife to ease the 20 year loneliness since his first wife died. Catherine Land responds to the advertisement and arrives in the depths of winter. She is motivated by greed as she realises the extent of Truitt's wealth. They marry and Truitt asks her to travel to the city and bring back his "prodigal son". There are some twists to the story and the reader wonders what the outcome will be. Both Truitt and Catherine have murky pasts, but how will that affect them now? It is a story of love, greed, revenge and redemption. A haunting tale. The author says he was profoundly influenced by the 1973 book (recently republished) Wisconsin Death Trip. 41/2/5

Fractured

I very much enjoyed Fractured by Karin Slaughter. A wealthy mother returns home to find an horrific scene and a young man with a knife standing over a body. She fears for her own life and takes steps to save herself. The detective, Will Trent, arrives and reads the scene differently and realises that the woman's daughter has been kidnapped. Then follows an intriguing and suspenseful investigation into what really happened at the house and the search for the missing daughter. Trent is a great character - intense, somewhat introverted, inciteful, good at puzzling things out. He also has a secret that he is afraid of having exposed and that looks like happening the more he interacts with his new female work partner, Faith Mitchell. The reader is taken on a suspenseful ride as Trent and Mitchell try to solve the case. 41/2/5

The Wrong Mother

I've enjoyed The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah. It was published the year before as Point of No Return (why change the title?) and it was recently on ABC1 as a two part series called "Case Sensitive" (which was a bit different to the book). Geraldine Bretherick and her daughter Lucy are found dead in their home and it appears to be a murder suicide. Her husband Mark insists Geraldine was a loving mother and would not have done this crime. A young mother, Sally, sees Mark on the news and recognises that he is not the same Mark Bretherick whom she met at a conference a year earlier and with whom she had a brief affair. Sally anonymously passes this information to the police and then begins her own investigation, the consequences of which further complicates the police investigation. 4/5

September Book Club

We had another lovely evening of book club at Jenny's place last night. She had a delicious selections of treats for supper and she'd bought some good books for us. Marilyn is still overseas, but hopefully we'll see her next month and Bev is also overseas visiting her mother. Ulla told us about her wonderful holiday in Europe. Two of our ladies are soon to be grandmothers, one for the first time and the other for the fifth. We enjoyed good company and conversation and I look forward to reading the books I've selected.

Notorious Australian Women

This book Notorious Australian Women by Kay Saunders was very interesting. The book told the stories of 20 women either born overseas or in Australia and who achieved notoriety or fame in Australia and in some cases internationally. Some names will be familiar e.g. Eliza Fraser, Helena Rubinstein, Lola Montez and Tilly Devine. Whether familiar or not, after reading the stories of their interesting lives the reader comes to know them and appreciate their contribution to our history. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Australian history. 4/5