a  tale of a unhappy woman
931503
The book was a different perspective from the girl on the train,to the women she watched from the train window at first she make up stories in her mind about the people she watches then you find out one of the couples that she watches is her ex husband and his new wife as she watches every day as the train goes by the girl on the train starts drinking heavier and heavier soon the train ride and the people she watches take over her life,loses her job and then starts go after the people that she has watched and disrupt their lives
2723607
Although the film was made well enough, I did not like the story.  The female character works in a service job, and this story makes her guilty of betraying some emotional trust in two people who should be grateful that she will be their friend.  I believe it is okay for her to be friends with two individuals who are divorced from one another, but the point seems to be that neither one of them as forgiven or forgotten hurt feelings, so the masseuse has to pay for that.  She deserves a much bigger tip, like love instead of grunting because needs have to be met.  Move on, lady!  Her new best friend and her new lover were once married, so they reject her.  Seems a petty reason to pass up love, so it is clear there was no love.
1109984
This is a depressing, yet, darkly humorous, story of what happened to the author beginning in 2008 when she worked at WaMu. It was probably a good place for Ms. Wolf to work, as she seemed to practice a lot of the same hand-over-my-eyes, I-will-deal-with-it-later types of methodologies as her doomed company. It was funny, and well-written and error-free, but as far as content goes, I couldn't help think at least some of this stuff must be exaggerated. At least I would hope so. She has an adopted daughter with mental problems, who she reluctantly takes into her home because her equally dysfunctional husband, whom she married three days after meeting in person (I guess their online relationship must have been such that three days is all she needed), wants it. She has homes and horses and credit card debts up the WaMu (pun intended, if it is a pun.) She loses everything, then gets breast cancer.

It is a really frank and funny read, but I couldn't identify with any of the choices Ms. Wolf made. I guess that isn't the point. I do think she is a great writer, and her humor is extremely sophisticated, so I'm four-starring it for that.

But really. I just couldn't identify with most of it, except the cancer, of course. That can happen to anyone. I should know. And a job loss can happen to anyone. But to be so ill-prepared and then expect an affluent sibling to bail you out? Really? And to keep on making poor financial choices, like keeping horses when you can't afford to? The author makes a case for that, that she needed to keep them for her sanity. But I don't understand that way of thinking, which is why I didn't appreciate the book as much as I'd hoped to.
4497676
I generally like Angry Robot as a publisher ...and I would have liked this one if a few things hadn't left me frustrated to the point of being infuriated at the author.

The book is about a little girl who experiences the trauma of her grandfather murdering her sisters and locking her in a peculiar grandfather clock. When she was rescued from this clock by Goliath, she was near dead and not the little girl she used to be. The book starts with them investigating spiritualists, psychics, etc in an effort to restore Mirror to her former self or at least put what was inside her now to peace. From there the story blossoms by introducing creeptastic villains and near villains who aren't all there, but aren't all gone either.

The infuriating thing is that the story is told in very short chapters, with a point of view change at each one, and each point of view is told in the first person even when it is a character so tangential to the plot as to be appropriately relegated by any other author, if it must be included at all, to small vignettes between longer main-character chapters. In this way we have the story from not only Mirror and Mr. Loveheart's (the aforementioned near villain) perspectives (and which are easily the most interesting perspectives), but also the perspectives of the boss villain, the mini-boss villain, the boss villain's ex-wife's aunt, Goliath, Death, and several other minor characters. She crams so many perspectives into such a slim book that it ironically leaves the story untold. This could have been a five star book for me if it had stayed focused and given more time with the protagonists.
3034511
The tale of two friends in love with the same woman is not likely to end happily. Their love interest is not true to herself and her decisions are quite self destructive.
4478253
This story was a sad commentary on the life of a young woman who grew up in a poor, dysfunctional, and abusive family without hope of improving her plight in life. Only after the birth of her son, did she find happiness and that was taken away by a a sick man. Amazing that she was able to continue to live her life with such a good attitude. I hope that one day she will be reunited with her son. Best of luck and a better life going forward. Not many of us would have survived what she did,
1671393
Our redoubtable author is not experiencing a good patch of life right now.  She's married and her kids are young and she's dealing with floods and famine.  It's depressing and she's depressed, and that's of interest to anyone who is following her career (and kudos to you) but I find I'm also depressing and depressed while I'm reading it because, well, the typical mode for reading Ms Holland's works is a sensual enjoyment of the pleasures of life, and in this book she's busy dealing with the absurd inequities and painful realities of life.  Even her book on living alone is less depressing, because the more progressive readership of hers is at least familiar with the feminine struggle in a patriarchal world.  In this book?  It's more about the struggle of the average non-upper-class in a world that doesn't much care about the non-upper-class.

If she were alive, I wouldn't leave this review.  She died while divorced, of cancer, and I wish her life could be better.  I'm still finishing the last few chapters.  It's a bit of a slog.  You stand warned.
828127
Behind the veil of innocence lays a perturbed need for satisfaction.  The author of "The Sacred Bath" tells the reader that she was sexually abused and kept as a sex slave against her will for "two long years."

I found the story hard to believe. I could not comprehend why Theresa continued to consider her first abductor to be her "friend." She falsely believed he would help her, keep an eye for her well-being and eventually help her get free from the unbelievable problem she got into.

The story, "The Sacred Bath," brought to mind the meaning of a Shakespearian tragedy as opposed to a Greek tragedy.

Based on the evidence she provides and her personal feelings, she considers her predicament falling within the meaning of a Greek tragedy.  That is, as opposed to a Shakespearian tragedy where the tragic character has a way out; in a Greek tragedy there is no way out for the tragic character.  That character is doomed without having a way out or solution to his or her tragic predicament, and this is where Theresa pegs her story.

I feel sympathy for Theresa, but I cannot feel sorry for her.  There are many ways she could have prevented her predicament even though she staunchly claims she did not have a way out of it, nor that "nobody" offered her help.  Her story is filled with holes where the reader can readily see she had a way out; a solution to the predicament she had fault in bringing upon herself.

She states that, "...All the time I was forced to have unprotected sex with dozens, hundreds (thousands?) of men.  I NEVER got pregnant. (P. 106, paragraph 6)"...I never got one sexual disease, not so much as a yeast infection!" (p. 106, paragraph 7)

To me, that in itself is not possible; it is unbelievable to say the least.

Being of the male gender, I find it difficult to believe the story as it was told.  I do not doubt she got raped and abused, but I found many faults in her story to believe the sexual abuse was none committal on her part.

I recommend "The Sacred Bath" to teenage readers of the female gender as well to parents of young children.  The story is not obscene in content, but it does contain sexual connotations that might need to be explained by parents of young readers.

God forbid that any child will get on the same predicament as Theresa did, but if the door knocks, the child who read this story will know what to do, and better yet, what NOT to do.
4044164
The Happiness Project: or why I spent what feels like a year reading about some awful, whiny, pretentious woman's first world problems.
1840506
As a fan of Eckler's writing in the Post, I looked forward to reading her experience with pregnancy and motherhood. While she is no doubt a good storyteller which allowed me to finish the book, I could not BELIEVE what a self-absorbed, spoiled, vain and immature brat she is. She whines the ENTIRE book about EVERYTHING: her weight gain and how she can't get to the gym her regular 5+ times a week, her inability to smoke as much as she wants, her inability to drink as much as she wants, her loaded fiance who pays for everything, her smitten "male friend" who gives her extra attention... whatever. I'm sure with her full time nanny, night nurse, personal trainer and four hour work day, she'll dump the weight in no time. Get a life Rebecca.
4246928
As a recent widow--I have been reading widely on grief loss and widowhood...I went from disbelief, dismay, and horror as I read this work, not because of her personal voyage, but because of the brutal and unkind treatment of "friends" and her late husband.  Joyce Oates reveals herself as a painfully selfish and shallow person, who was sheltered from life by a husband whose intimate and private secrets she now chooses to reveal in this memoir.  It seems that her sorrow is driven more by the fact that her shelter from the world is gone and that her household routine has changed, than the absence of her husband. Her unkindness to those reaching out to help her, her continuous name dropping of academic and literary folks illuminates her one-dimensional persona--Joyce the writer. Since she is a writer of fiction, I do wonder about some of heightened drama as well as the glaring omission of her rapid remarriage. She is now the third wife of someone she met six months after her husbands death--and married six months later. Her current husband should hope he outlives her, so as not to be "Oatesmeal" for her "book mill".
4887700
A well written tale but I found it disturbing on many levels. The adventures she narrates are about his selfish dreams, all about what he wants, his failure to listen to her or consider her feelings. He is manipulative and controlling and she goes along with this, willingly working tirelessly beside him. It is all about him. When she finds some cable on the beach she thought she could unravel to make wire for a pot rack he refused to help her drag it home, in spite of all she has done for him. It's a shame she can't see his behaviour as abusive and controlling and think of herself and strong and competent. I just kept wishing she would wake up and say "enough, what about me".
4320762
This is a story of sisters and the fact that one was arrested and sent to jail.  She Dana was accused of killing a baby, because she had been seen standing near the crib holding the baby and crying uncontrollably.  The baby was dead. Dana was then sent to the childrens dormitory of a jail where the matron is stern and cruel.  Mrs. Poole told everyone what the new arrival had done to be sent to jail.  She also slapped people on their face for talking, struck them with a bamboo pole on the shoulders, and tried to make their lives miserable.  Who visited Dana in the prison?  Who caused her to be in prison?  This story also tells the story of Celeste, who grows up in a wealthy Hollywood family.  What did Celeste want to be?  And finally it has the story of Celeste's mother, written in memoir form.  What did Celestes mother say was Gods justice for her sin?  Lots of weaving back in forth in stories.  Frankly, I found it confusing.
3155379
Faced with losing her apartment and the meaninglessness of her job, Lucinda Trout abandons the superficialness, craziness, and expense of NCY and moves to a small city in the midwest.  She brings her career with her via freelance assignments, rents an apartment, and begins to socialize with the locals in search of "quality life."
Of course, as anyone who is not a NY writer in her late 20's knows, it isn't that easy.  Lucinda's first spacious apartments stinks and has fleas, she finds the conversations of her new friends shallow, her boyfriend is a meth addict with 3 children with 3 different women, and she takes up drinking cheap grocery store wine.
The Quality of Life report veers from being laugh out loud funny, sad in its exposure of unrealized dreams, and frustrating in that the self centered and condescending lead character can't quite pull the reader all the way into her story.
Although readable, this book is disappointing.  It could have been so much more, but is too rife with stereotypes, thin characters, and self involvement to do the storyline justice.
1694507
This is a book about self pity. I was given this book because of my own plans to hike the PCT. Very little of the book relates to her actual physical trek. Instead, you are witness to her self-destructive behavior and her attempts to escape the chaos brought on by her bad choices and her mother's death. I cannot relate to her because while she may be intelligent (as she continually tells us), she makes stupid decisions. I see no redeeming qualities and find her personally loathsome and unusually self-absorbed. In the epilogue, she relates that she is now married with two children. My reaction was to pity them. I hope she has straightened her life out for the sake of the kids. I gave it two stars because while I didn't like it, it was written well enough to keep me engaged to the end.
2456886
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb  begins when Dolores Price is four years old when a TV is being delivered to her home, a gift from her father's employer. Her life, told in first person narrative, is laid out chronologically from one tragic event to the next.

Dolores lives in Connecticut with her father and mother. As she enters young adulthood, her mother becomes pregnant with a little boy. After a tragic death during birth, Dolores remains an only child and her mother and father's relationship starts to deteriorate. Dolores' parents soon divorce and her mother goes away to a mental hospital to deal with not only the death of her child, but also the fact that her husband cheated on her and left her for another woman.

In the midst of her family falling apart, Dolores goes to live with her grandmother in Rhode Island where she fights her way through her teenage years and becomes overweight and alone. Her struggle only gets worse in college and eventually she ends up in a mental hospital, just as her mother did, and stays there for quite a long time. After feeling like she is ready to move on with her life, Dolores decides to start from scratch in Vermont.

She's Come Undone  is comparable to a very long, bad movie that I couldn't stop watching. Every chapter was worse than the one prior, but I couldn't stop reading it. I wanted to find something to love in this book, something to just like even, but I couldn't until I finally got to Chapter 20 out of 29. This is where I would say the book became tolerable, but not great, or even good.

Dolores' life is as far from normal as it can get, and I blame her whack-job parents for this. After her move to Rhode Island, she never seems to do anything except watch TV, eat, and avoid most human interaction until she is in her 20's. This is due to the fact that everyone at school makes fun of her and because she always ends up trusting the wrong people. By the middle of the book, I thought, "Okay, it has to get better, Dolores has to get better." Even though it seemed as if she was better on one page, the next page threw that idea out the window, and Dolores was back to square one.

I have never read a more depressing book in my life. It's as if Wally Lamb was trying way too hard to make us feel bad for Dolores, but I just ended up feeling more and more angry as the novel drug on; enraged even. Every bad thing that could happen to a person happened to Dolores.

As the book seemed to be winding down, and I thought there couldn't be anymore surprises left, the book started to get sad. As in, Rent the musical kind of sad. Wasn't there enough pain and agony in this story? Did that have to be thrown in there too? As the book ended though, I had a smile on my face, not because I was finally finished reading it (although I was more than happy about that) but because Dolores found what she was looking for.

This review is also posted in my blog.
4389792
She complains about her struggle for success. She has no idea.