I have read several books by Rebecca Serle. One Italian Summer, like In Five Years and The Dinner List involves time and magical realism. Her plots are exciting, and she usually has a moral to what she writes: appreciate what you have, live your life for yourself, and people are complex, so don't judge others. It feels there isn't room for another point of view besides hers, but she does write transfixing, steamy stories. I don't regret reading them, but I also don't seek them out unless someone recommends them. One Italian summer made me want to go to Positano, Italy, because of Serle's lush descriptions of the sun, beaches, and food. Yes, please!
I love Maggie O'Farrell's books, and I've read many of them: Hamnet; I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, This Must Be the Place, The Hand That First Held Mine. This week I read Instructions for a Heatwave. I hesitate when I start a Maggie O'Farrell book because her writing is piercing in its understanding of humans. Instructions for a Heatwave is historical fiction about an Irish family living in London during a famous heatwave.
It is so hot it makes people do crazy things. The story moves between family members who are quirky, hot, and trying to figure out what to do when their husband/father disappears. It pulls the mother, the two oldest siblings, and the self-exiled baby of the family together to solve the mystery of their missing father's past. Secrets boil out, old wounds are enflamed, and tempers flare. It's a terrific read.
I'm in a theological book club, and this was the book for April. The most valuable part of reading this book was discussing it with my Dear Husband. I didn't change my position (I'm Presbyterian in my beliefs, and we practice infant baptism). Still, it did sharpen my understanding of why I hold to it and what other denominations believe. I didn't feel that the book was coherent or easily readable. Perhaps it was intended for academics, but I think it would have done better to aim at interested lay readers. I don't recommend it.
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