Customer Comments

When two girls steal apples from Talmadge, he doesn't react. When they later follow him to his orchard, he leaves plates of food for them on the porch. They are frightened, intrigued, and very pregnant. What starts almost as a story of taming, turns into a complex narrative of family and place. Amanda Coplin's prose is rich and wise, and the plot takes turns you will not expect. A powerful novel.

When Elsa is diagnosed with cancer, her family wonders how they will survive without her--the smart, generous, ambitious mother/wife/grandmother who once danced on a table for her birthday. As the family contents with the inevitable tragedy, granddaughter Anna discovers another more shocking loss and betrayal. She puts on what she thinks is her grandmother's dress and instead finds out it belongs to Eeve, the nanny nobody talks about. This beautiful novel is told from alternating points of view and is written with tremendous generosity. Even as characters are making bad choices, we care about them. The prose lingers, but is never slow. This novel stayed in my mind long after I read it and I have been recommending it to everyone.

I adore this book. It's is everything a good memoir should be: funny, informative, and wise. Not only would I recommend this book to anyone, but if I were rich, I would buy copies and hand it out. It's simply excellent!

Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is a creepy, compelling novel that makes the most out of its location: Finland. Something is amiss at the sanitarium beside the Baltic Sea. As the wealthy ladies dine on rye bread and cheese and patter beside the windows and as the days grow shorter, the feeling of impending doom increases. I would recommend this novel for anyone who has read and enjoyed Iris Murdoch's The Bell.

Fantastically readable and tremendously informative. As I started reading, I wondered whether Barry Estabrook would be able to fill the entire book on a single subject and maintain his narrative pull. He does. The prose is lively throughout. Each chapter addresses a new topic. We readers are consistently learning new and important and interesting facts. I read it in a week. And it has changed the way I shop. I would recommend this book to anyone! In fact, my husband--who detests the tomato--heard so much about the book from me that he had to read it next. Now he can't wait to buttonhole his family and tell them interesting facts about tomatoes. Excellent book. And I hope it will change the way Florida grows tomatoes and treats workers.

If you've been to Prague recently, you owe it to yourself to read about Prague before the flood of tourists. This memoir is also a wonderful family story--with a thread cast through on the search for beauty.

I adored Gilead. It was a quiet, complex book with characters who were all striving to do the right thing and yet were often unable to connect with each other. The book is backdropped by a fascinating historical time period. Highly recommended.

A marvelous book. Murdoch delicately sets the mood and prepares the reader for one kind of story and delivers quite another--one that nevertheless feels true to the quiet beginning. This is a beautiful book. The writing is stunning and the narrative is fascinating. It's no surprise this book won the Booker Prize.