My last two reads...

Vinegar Hill: A Novel by A. Manette Ansay

An Oprah's Book Club book, set in the early 1970's, the novel follows Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Ellen dutifully follows her newly unemployed husband moving their family of four into the stifling, loveless house of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill. Her and her husband both find work, however he falls too easily into the routine of living back at home with his parents and has no ambition to find them a place of their own. His job takes him away from the house frequently for long periods leaving Ellen to deal with her verbally abusive in-laws and a house full of dark, un-spoken secrets. In the end Ellen must find the strength to endure, change, grow, and move-on.

I liked this novel well enough. I read it very quickly -- something about the story was gripping and yet it was almost depressing too. In the end you find out the strange family secret and Ellen decides to break out and take care of herself and her children, which was the main reason I kept reading. But it was also a haunting tale, well told.


Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Well, I didn't know I was reading so many Oprah Book Club books. This one is the current one that she is reading and is what is up on her webpage now.

Anyway, a brief low-down on the book...from the back cover: Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal.

This book was weirdly, wonderfully fascinating. A story about a pseudo-hermaphrodite, Cal actually has a medical condition called 5-alpha-reductase Deficiency, where genetically he is a boy, but appeared to be a girl until puberty hits. The story was well written, even though it goes back and forth between time periods, Eugenides does it smoothly. I could not put it down, it was told with feeling as if Eugenides lived Cal's story first-hand. It was also intriguing discussing Nature vs. Nurture; the scientific info appealed to my science streak.

Anyone read either of these? Thoughts? Comments? Want me to pass them on if you haven't read them? Let me know!

Cover photos courtesy of Amazon.com.