This month we are reviewing the book Open House by Elizabeth Berg. Now available at London Drugs for 30% off our everyday low price.

Open House by Elizabeth Berg
In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
Samantha’s husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany’s, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember–and reclaim–the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.

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Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott In a moment of self-absorption, Clara Purdy’s life takes a sharp left turn when she crashes into a beat-up car carrying an itinerant family of six. The Gage family had been travelling to a new life in Fort McMurray, but bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer rather than remnants of the accident. Recognizing their need as her responsibility, Clara tries to do the right thing and moves the children, husband, and horrible grandmother into her own house–then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness.

What, exactly, does it mean to be good? When is sacrifice merely selfishness? What do we owe in this life and what do we deserve? Marina Endicott looks at life and death through the compassionate lens of a born novelist: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

“I found the characters in this book a little hard to relate to. They were either so good that people walked all over them or they were terribly selfish and cruel. I found myself hoping that one of the bad characters would get caught or face some kind of repercussions for their actions. I did really enjoy the storyline. The idea of all these people coming together to help one another out and becoming a family among themselves made for a nice story.”  – Kelly

Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback.

The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human.

Reviews

“Interesting points of view from the author, good observations of her dog – the focus of the book surrounds life with and the observations of her one dog for the most part.” – Review by Janice

“It did offer some insights into my dog (and others) that I did not know about–I now know what’s going on when he “smiles” at me when I get home! What I found very interesting was learning that our dogs are not as closely “related” to the wolf as some people would have us to believe and explained why the “pack mentality” training and raw food diets a lot of people push at us are really not what’s best for our dogs. Definitely not a dog training book, more of an owner-educating book about why your dog does some of the things he does.” – Review by Theresa

 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them—in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul—they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman’s love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Reviews

“A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, tells the intertwining story of two women in war torn Afghanistan. The upheaval and turmoil of the country is mirrored in the personal lives of these two women. They endure hardships and heartaches of unimaginable magnitude. Despite the oppression, despite the tragedy, they endure. It is a story of love, hope and survival.

The rich imagery and compelling characters draw you in to this foreign world. The story telling is highly engaging, and clips along at a pace that makes the book hard to put down. Despite the many lows, there are glimmers of hope and sparks of humour that keep you going. A modern epic.

I personally found the story and the women to be inspiring, rather than pitiable, and I was left with a sense of gratitude for the life I have. I would highly recommend this book.” – Review by Melissa

“The history of the last 33 years of Afghanistan is told through the lives of 2 women from very different backgrounds.  The story takes us into the villages and homes of the Afghan people living through this tumultuous era.  Hosseini’s ability to capture the sounds, taste, smell and even fear of daily life drew me into the story completely.  Hosseini has opened a window to a world not many of us could imagine. I wasn’t able to put this book down until I finished it.” – Review by Shirley

“I couldn’t put this book down! As hard as it was to read of the horrors these women have to live through on a daily basis it was written with such a feeling of hope. Hosseini writes with such a compelling style that he helps to pull you through this story and show you the strength and love that people are capable of even in the toughest of situations. A true masterpiece.” – Review by Kelly

 The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

Kabul under the Taliban, a devastated city ruled by executioners and crows, where laughing in public brings down the wrath of the religious police. This is the world in which Yasmina Khadra – a pseudonym of a former officer in the Algerian army – sets his cauterizing novel of fanaticism and tenderness.

With an implacable eye, Khadra follows two couples: Mohsen and Zunaira are dispirited surviors of Afghanistan’s educated middle class; Atiq is a brutish jailer bound by a debt of gratitude to his dying wife, Musarrat. One day the horrified Mohsen finds himself taking part in the stoning of a condemned prostitute, an action that will impel all four characters toward new destinies. As spare as carved bone and filled with images that explode like bombs, The Swallows of Kabul is a work of haunting power.

“I found this book affected me on 2 different levels. One was in the vast difference between the way we live here in North America and the horrors that people face on a daily basis in other parts of the world. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a woman to live in a place where you have almost no rights at all. I was also struck by how people can overcome their circumstances to show such strength and tenderness for each other. These people are stripped of everything and yet they still try to maintain their sense of human decency.

While this book takes place in a bleak setting the imagery and the gentle writing makes it a difficult book to put down.” – Review by Kelly

The Swallows of Kabul is available at London Drugs.