Homesick Creek

By Diane Hammond 2005

ISBN 0-385-50944-8

This is a five star book.

Themes of love, family, friendship, faithfulness, privilege and parenting are treated in a very sensitive fashion.

The plot is skilfully unfolded with layers of complexity unfolding gently without any sense of being rushed or any of the confusion that can occur when a story is written in a non-sequential manner.

Sections I particularly enjoyed:

“Bunny had got out of the habit of leaving town. There wasn’t anything beyond Hubbard that she really wanted. She wanted Vinny to give her grandchildren and be around to care for her when she got old. She wanted to have enough money for a new deck and decent wallpaper in the bathroom and a washing machine that didn’t walk around during the spin cycle. She wanted to have a wine cooler with her mother, Shirl, in the afternoon sometimes and to get on a later shift at the Anchor. She wanted to be the wife of someone who planned to stick around. Those weren’t the kinds of things you could get over in Sawyer.” Page 17

“…four months ago she had found a rat in the toilet. The property manager had told her just to put something heavy on the toilet lid and give it an hour. That was when Anita knew she might as well stop waiting for her real life to begin, the life that included a nice yard and a man who could maintain it. This was her real life, right here, right now, waiting in a piece-of-shit dump for a rat to die in her toilet.” Page 42

“You know what you end up asking yourself?” Fanny said. “How little can I live with? You ask yourself how little can I live with, and how much do I need. And the answer keeps getting smaller, and your marriage keeps shrinking. In the beginning it fits fine, you know, roomy enough to keep you warm, and you can move all around in it. Then you have the kids, and when your husband stay away from you, you’re mostly glad, because They just get in the way, and who gives a shit about sex when you haven’t had two minutes to yourself in five years? And all that time your marriage is getting smaller and smaller, except you don’t notice because it hasn’t occurred to you to notice, and why should you? You just pull it down and stretch it out, and if you feel a draft now and then, you ignore it because you don’t have time to deal with ti anyway. By the time you do, your marriage is this little tiny thing that doesn’t cover shit and you’re freezing to death out there in the cold.”

The Dirty Dollar

by Gerald Hammond (2002)
ISBN 0-7278-5842-4

This was a feel-good book about a young woman who went from rags to riches via a stint of swimming for a life in the midst of the Florida Everglades, complete with crocodiles in mid-breeding season. A non-challenging but satisfying read, with a strong main character who had what it took to grab life with both hands.

Seduced by Moonlight

by Laurell Hamilton 2004
ISBN 0-345-44356-X

This one surprised me and I nearly gave up. Trying to get my head around the Seelie and the Unseelie, sidhe, mortals, fays and hybrids, Kings, Queens, Princes and goblins and starting part way through a series was not a good idea. However I persevered and enjoyed some of the lyrical descriptions of wings, eyes and other body parts.
From a review by Alisa McCune it appears that this is not the best of the series so perhaps I should follow up on the earlier ones. However two of my requested books arrived at the library yesterday and will keep me busy added to term starting again on Monday.

Sugar Skull

by Denise Hamilton 2003
ISBN 0-7432-4539-3

Sugar skulls - I knew nothing, but now I do.
The past history of Eve Diamond and Silvio was also new to me.
It is weird reading a series backwards, at times it seems pointless when you know what is going to happen next, but it does fill in the background.
I finished reading this two weeks ago at PPTA Conference in Auckland, and can't remember much about it, but I did learn stuff, and I did enjoy it, and now it is due back to the library. It is much easier to write about books when they are fresh in your head!
I marked some pages but am a bit vague about why now.

1. On page 23, Eve writes "I felt acutely aware of my own dishabille." Is that spelled right? Having now researched it I see that is in fact correct, although it comes from the French déshabillé which is why I was confused, I guess. (I studied French all my time at high school.)
2. On page 47, Eve is avoiding police on a hillside and peeking into a cabana through windows that open onto a bathroom. She sees through the bathroom to a bedroom and observes "a man's black Speedo racing suit crumpled" at the foot of the bed. It strikes me as unlikely that anyone could be so sure about this observation in these circumstances.

New resolutions: to make notes about each book as I finish it, even if I don't have the Internet on tap, and to write pencil notes on pages that I mark.