Fireside is an absolute charmer! It is sweet and romantic without being sappy and it has such genuine heart to it that you can't help but grow to adore the characters, both main and secondary.

In a previous review for a different book by a different author I got a bit bent out of shape about the alarming amount of sex. Here, in this lovely novel, the love scenes are actual love scenes and they are neither rampant nor rabid.

As one of the main characters, Abby, says in a very emotionally raw and tender scene: “First, I need you to know this about me. At this stage in my life, I couldn’t possibly be sexual…I couldn’t possibly make love to someone, Mac, unless I was in a committed relationship. It simply isn’t in me. Perhaps it’s some kind of odd British prudery. I don’t know, but there you have it.”

Cate Culpepper writes about women who deeply value relationships and take their time getting to know each other.

Mac is a restless spirit who has never stayed at one job for more than two years, while Abby has sealed herself off from love out of self-doubt of her own worthiness.* Her strong work ethic comes from a good place but also because she "found a kind of insidious safety in her solitary life. Devoting all her energies to her work carried certain advantages."

The author captures scenes and people in a way that makes the fact you reach for a tissue while you happily cry seem perfectly natural. She reminds you that love really is special and that it's something worth waiting for. It makes me smile to think about reading more of her novels! :)

 

 

 

 

 

*Abby's self-doubt creeps up a lot in the book, especially in the beginning. Some of those passages just really get to me:

 

-It seemed, as her mother had pointed out more than once, that Abby was simply not the kind of woman capable of arousing strong feelings in others.

 

=Abby had never been a raving beauty, and rarely anyone’s first choice. Hope that she could inspire the kind of devotion she wanted to feel herself. That she was worthy of love, and nothing she’d done in the past had changed that.

I did so want to like If I Were A Boy by Erin O'Reilly. The title grabbed me right away, making me think it would be a lot deeper emotionally and romantically than it actually is. For me, the "If I were a boy" resonated, because it is something heartbreaking and real a gay woman might say (even these days) to herself or to someone else when the world makes it especially challenging to be a lesbian. One of the two central characters in the book mostly says it as a joke, though, which seems to be the catalyst for both women suddenly realizing there is an attraction between them.

The two main problems I have with Erin O'Reilly's otherwise sincere and (from what I can tell) good-intentioned tale is how physically-driven Helen and Katie's relationship is (Cinemax-driven might be the better word) and how one of the women's sister is so homophobic and so over the top about it, it almost becomes a farce.

At one point, Helen tells her mother she's worried her "overloaded baser instincts" have gotten the best of her, not knowing the woman she supposedly loves, Katie, has just overheard her. It's a very insulting comment, a very hurtful one, and yet it's kind of true...because so much of Helen and Katie's relationship is nothing more than sneaking around and lying to their husbands. Yes, their husbands are major jerks (horrific in the case of Helen's husband Bobby), but they still sneak around...grabbing sex whenever they can, mostly on a beach, when the rest of the group they're all vacationing with is away fishing for the day.

If I sound a bit bitter, I suppose it's because I am, a tad. Quality lesfic is hard to find, especially quality lesfic that represents love as something far more than physical. Sex sells, as they say (whoever "they" is), but some of us still prefer our love stories old-fashioned.

The writing itself is not bad and there is a plucky spirit I like (Katie is so so sweet in her fierce need and sincere desire to protect Helen) but that's just not enough for me...the innocence and mood of the kiss on the front cover is never quite matched within the book.

My favorite magazine is Mojo, which has a column called "All Back To My Place" where musicians talk about their favorite music. I love, love, love Frankie Valli (even more now that he considers Guilty one of his favorite albums.)

 

Guilty's cover always made me laugh, though I love the record itself. In the early 80s my mom played it on the stereo a lot, mostly because she adored Barry Gibb and liked Barbra Streisand's voice.

 

I've always felt a bit afraid to admit it's one of of my favorite albums...because, well, look at that cover! But time has been kind to it (the music, if not the cover) and I think it holds up rather nicely.

 

 

Review by William Ruhlmann

The biggest selling album of Barbra Streisand's career is also one of her least characteristic. The album was written and produced by Barry Gibb in association with his brothers and the producers of the Bee Gees, and in essence it sounds like a post-Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees album with vocals by Streisand. Gibb adapted his usual style somewhat, especially in slowing the tempos and leaving more room for the vocal, but his melodic style and the backup vocals, even when they are not sung by the Bee Gees, are typical of them. Still, the record was more hybrid than compromise, and the chart-topping single "Woman in Love" has a sinuous feel that is both right for Streisand and new for her. Other hits were the title song and "What Kind of Fool," both duets with Gibb. (The song "Guilty" won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal by Duo or Group.)

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I can't get the Vince Clarke remix of "Dove" by Future Islands out of my head...it's great for chilling or listening to while exercising. :)

The best sampler cd from a music magazine I've heard in ages, The Dreamers has, aside from everything else great about it, two gorgeous covers of classic songs...

 

"You Don't Own Me" (originally recorded by Lesley Gore) more than holds up in Policia's hands while Julia Holter's take on "Don't Make Me Over" (Hal David/Burt Bacharach) is as absolutely mesmerizing as her wonderful treatment of "Hello Stranger" on her album Loud City Song. The woman truly makes interpreting well-known songs a magical thing...

 

Still, it’s the album’s centerpiece, a hypnotizing six-and-a-half minute rendition of Barbara Lewis' “Hello Stranger”, that might just be the most uncomplicatedly gorgeous thing Holter’s ever done. It’s risky to tackle a tune that’s been covered enough times to make it feel like a modern-day standard, but Holter’s atmospheric take finds a particular strain of longing and serenity in the song. It's a heart-stopper. Amidst the rest of Loud City Song’s chatty, high-concept vitality, “Hello Stranger” is a moment of comfort and instant connection, like suddenly spotting a familiar face on a busy street.-Pitchfork magazine

 

CMJ calls her "woozy" and I think they mean it in the best way possible...what a dreamy voice she has.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really, really like The Girl You Left Behind, more for the writing and insights than the actual plot or characters. And how JoJo Moyes respectfully handles the subject of grief (she so gets that there shouldn't be a time stamp on when we stop hurting) is just beautiful at times.

 

There are many times when Liv (one of two main characters the novel focuses on) is engulfed in her grief. When she goes to a gay bar (not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be hit on either) she drinks (or tries to) herself into oblivion:

 

 Now she is trying to climb back onto her bar stool. She makes two attempts, the second sending her stumbling backward clumsily. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and peers at the bar as if it’s the summit of Everest. She propels herself…

 

Not too long after, she tries to explain to Paul, a man she has just met, that she and her husband really did have something special:

 

We didn’t really fight. Not about toothpaste or farting or anything. We just liked each other. We really liked each other. We were . . . happy.” She is biting back tears and turns her head toward the window, forcing them away. She will not cry tonight. She will not.

 

Her daily "coping strategy" is way too familiar to anyway who has ever tried to forget:

 

She had begun running after she had realized that she could use the world outside, the noise in her earphones, her own motion, as a kind of deflector. Now it has become habit, an insurance policy. I do not have to think. I do not have to think. I do not have to think.

 

One of my favorite passages, though, comes from the first half of the book, where another woman (living in 1916) is also missing her husband (a prisoner of war) terribly. She remembers their first impressions of each other, thinking he reminded her of "a cross between a Roman emperor and a Russian bear." He, in turn, told her:

 

"The first time I saw you I watched you standing in the middle of that bustling store and I thought you were the most self-contained woman I had ever seen. You looked as if the world could explode into fragments around you and there you would be, your chin lifted, gazing out at it imperiously from under that magnificent hair…"

 

There is so much genuine love in both women's stories, whose lives intertwine through a portrait, the same title as that of the book.

 

This is the first Jojo Moyes book I've ever read. I think what surprises me most about The Girl You Left Behind is how natural the read feels, even when there are elements that could seem contrived or gimmicky (like Mo, the snarky sidekick hiding a big heart behind her Goth appearance or the emotional plot twists that make you cry despite your determination not to.)

Never once did I feel manipulated by the author or roll my eyes at the sweetness of both love stories...with a less skilled writer, this could have easily happened. As far as I can tell, there are no plans to film this in the immediate future. Maybe that's for the best...this is the kind of novel you want to play out on your own mind's screen.

 

 

 (There is also an underlying sense of humor within that keeps everything from getting too morose.)