Today, I started reading The Breakaway: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner, an inspiring new book about love, family, friendship, secrets, and a life-changing journey. The story revolves around 33-year-old Abby Stern, who is content with her life despite not having a steady career and living in a college-like apartment.

She cherishes her good friends, her bike, and the bicycling club in Philadelphia. Abby is comfortable with her plus-size body most of the time and is engaged to Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, whom she met at a weight-loss camp that her mother dragged her to.

However, Abby can’t shake off the feeling that something is amiss, and she can’t forget the breathtaking night she spent with Sebastian two years ago. When Abby gets an unexpected invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she gladly accepts, hoping to get away from Mark and reflect on her life. But things get complicated when she spots Sebastian in the group, and her mother, Eileen, whom Abby blames for her body insecurities, joins the trip at the last minute.

The strangers on the journey soon become friends, hidden truths come to light, and a teenage girl with a secret brings the riders together in ways they never imagined. As they travel over 700 miles, Abby must re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Today, I dived into “Tell Me Everything: A Novel” by Elizabeth Strout, and I’m already captivated. This book made it onto NPR’s best books list for 2024 and caught the eye of Oprah’s Book Club—no small feat! Strout writes with such empathy and emotional depth that it reflects her incredible talent. Lucy beautifully captures this sentiment by stating, “Love comes in many different forms, but it is always love.”

With her profound understanding of the human condition and silences that convey deep emotions, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, reuniting with her beloved characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and others—as they confront a shocking crime, navigate love while choosing to remain apart, and ponder the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer, Bob Burgess, finds himself entangled in a murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also developed a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William.

Lucy and Bob take walks and discuss their lives, fears, regrets, and what could have been. Meanwhile, Lucy is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, who now resides in a retirement community on the outskirts of town. They spend afternoons in Olive’s apartment, sharing stories about people they have known—what Olive calls “unrecorded lives,” which reanimate their experiences and imbue their lives with meaning.

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Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack delivers a thrilling, unpredictable tale of a sex worker who morphs into a political assassin, thrust into a high-stakes game of survival. This captivating story weaves together elements of deception, murder, and the complexities of today’s political landscape, offering readers a fresh, gripping perspective that keeps them on the edge of their seats.

The protagonist, a thirty-two-year-old sex worker, is taken by surprise when undercover government agents approach her to assist in a top-secret plot to assassinate a politician known as Meat Neck. However, after the assassination, she realizes the harsh truth: she has been deemed 100% disposable.

Now holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she has only two days, her wits, and a laptop to save her own life.

Her best chance is to reach out to the popular feminist investigative podcast, Justice for Bimbos. In a series of hastily typed emails, the newly dubbed Murder Bimbo reveals how she was recruited and trained by a group of covert U.S. agents to eliminate Meat Neck.

Next, she opens a new email addressed to her ex, where the facts present a different narrative.

Structured in three increasingly unhinged acts, each offering a more subversive version of the story than the last, Murder Bimbo is simultaneously a thrilling literary work, a satirical manifesto for vigilantes, or a raucous commentary on the political madness we experience daily. Regardless, it serves as a serious announcement of an electrifying new voice in American literature.

Rebecca Novack grew up in the Rocky Mountains. She has a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School.

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A Separation by Katie Kitamura is about a young woman who has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. All I could think about from the opening page until I finished the book was how Jan and I, despite one messy period, never dealt with infidelity or separation. Our love was pure as the driven snow. The subject matter would typically not have interested me enough to read the book. However, it is written in a hypnotic manner that mesmerizes the reader into turning the next page.

I highly recommend this book.

Goodreads provides an overview.

As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to look for him, still keeping their split to herself. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him.  For the moment, it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them.

Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love.

A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished and transfixed.

In closing, I highly recommend this book.

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I have started reading “Whale Fall: A Novel” by Elizabeth O’Connor. With its unique blend of loss, isolation, folklore, and the journey of self-discovery, this debut novel offers a compelling narrative set in 1938 on a remote Welsh island. The story is catalyzed by the arrival of a dead whale, a powerful symbol that sets the stage for the characters’ journeys.

The story revolves around Manod, a young woman who has spent her entire life on the island. Despite their island home’s harsh yet stunning surroundings, Manod yearns to explore life beyond it, a desire that will resonate with many readers.

As two English ethnographers arrive to study the island’s culture, Manod sees it as a potential escape from her community. However, her growing involvement with them triggers a profound internal conflict. She grapples with the dilemma of pursuing her desires or remaining loyal to her community. This struggle resonates with the universal human experience, making it a compelling read for many.

‘Whale Fall‘ vividly portrays the tensions that surface when one person’s aspirations threaten the unity of a community. O’Connor’s narrative skillfully depicts the community and Manod on the brink, forced to confront a world that seems to infringe upon them. This evokes a sense of admiration for O’Connor’s storytelling prowess, making it a must-read for literary fiction enthusiasts.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, a writer recommended to me, but I have always kept them on the to-read list, not the current reading. Does a beautiful word exist? Is it possible to live in a beautiful world despite the loss of the love of my life? Perhaps reading  Beautiful World, Where Are You, will help me in my grief journey.

Ms. Rooney’s book was a page-turner, and I highly recommend it.

One of the quotes from the book echoed my dream of a beautiful world.

“When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child – a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth.” ― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

It also helped remind me how unique and memorable the love that Jan and I shared was. We could quickly fall into a life lived separately as friends, or we might not have ever fallen in love and married.

As Sally Rooney in Beautiful World, Where Are You, wrote:

“If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn’t have made me who I am.”

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, and they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, and they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

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