The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

Genre: Fiction/Thought-Provoking

Date of Publication: September 4^th, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man suffers a paralyzing fear no other creature endures. A fear time is running out.” (pg. 8)

Storyline: A+

Pace of Story: A+

Characters: A+

Ending: A

Overall Grade: A+

Lasting Impression: This book will change your life and the way you look at the concept of time.

When everyone is born, we are given all of the time we will ever need to accomplish our goals, find our true loves, and create the lives that will make us happiest.  Unfortunately, measuring time in units of seconds, hours, minutes, and days do nothing but add stress to our lives and make us forget that we are never losing any “time,” it is all there; it just depends on how we use it.  Similar to his novels The Five People You Meet in Heaven and For One More Day, Mitch Albom delves into areas of the human psyche we overlook everyday and challenges the reader to look past the bustle of everyday life and notice how much the little things matter.

Dor, a man who is alive during the creation of the Tower of Babel, has an interest in measuring, which inadvertently leads him to creating the measurement of time.  Similar to the way Eve defies the Garden of Eden by eating the apple, Dor defies God by taking away the gift of living by the day and making humans measure their lives with Dor’s time instruments (i.e. sundials and clock).  Because of this, Dor finds himself punished for eternity by being forced to listen to all the complaints people have about not having “enough time” and other phrases that incorporate the limited amount of time they believe they have.

To rectify his creation, Dor is told to change the lives of two individuals, one who wants more time and one who wants time to stop.  The journey he goes on, as well as the two people’s lives he will change, show the way we must realize that time is only a measurement and should not control our actions or the way we choose to live.

The characters in Albom’s novel are incredibly relatable and make Albom’s message of focusing on the days we have, not the time we have left, that much more powerful. The way the novel is written is exceptional, in its delivery of the delicate subjects of time and death as well as the way we are reminded to appreciate those who love us, for when they are gone there is no turning back time. 

The lessons that Albom has Dor teach the two individuals will stick with the reader for a long time, if not for the rest of their lives because each one of us tends to be someone who either wants less time or wants more of it:

For those who can relate to believing that the end is near or they want less time, Albom personifies through Dor that yesterdays are endings while tomorrows are beginnings, we cannot end what has not begun. For those who wish they had more time, they must remember that the concept of immortality, although tempting, should not be thought of as an immediate solution because knowing you will never die takes the thrill and joy out of everyday life and would be replaced with a boredom of endless, repetitive days.

Albom has outdone himself in The Time Keeper, encouraging the reader through the perspectives of three amazing individuals to stop looking at your watches and clocks long enough to realize that we can all live better lives if we start measuring our lives by the moments, not the seconds.

~Shelly-Beans

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Genre: General Fiction/Contemporary

Date of Publication: April 3^rd, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “I’m talking about the language of flowers,” Elizabeth said, “It’s from the Victorian Era, like your name. If a man gave a young lady a bouquet of flowers, she would race home and try to decode it like a secret message. Red roses mean love, yellow roses, infidelity. So a man would have to choose his flowers carefully.” (pg. 29)

Storyline: A+

Pace of the Story: A+

Characters: A+

Ending: A

Overall: A+

When women are asked what their favorite flowers are, most will name a specific flower because of its color, scent, or general beauty.  What most women do not realize, however, is that flowers have a deeper purpose than most recognize.  Each flower has a specific meaning, and the truth behind each flower may make some second guess what their favorite flower really is. For example, Chrysanthemums mean truth, Lilies mean majesty, Pansies mean think of me, Sunflowers mean false riches, and orphan Victoria Jones uses these messages to convey her deepest thoughts and desires in a world she feels shut out from.  Moving from foster home to foster home, she keeps a rough and jaded attitude towards the world until a few special individuals enter Victoria’s life and show her that the past can be forgiven and her flowers are the key to her happiness. 

Similar to Caroline Clairmont's talent with chocolate and the way she changed people’s lives with it in the film Chocolat, Victoria’s passion for flowers help bring out the deepest of people’s desires through the language of flowers that many have forgotten and do not take the time to acknowledge. (Towards the end of the novel, Diffenbaugh includes “Victoria’s Dictionary of Flowers”, which gives the reader meanings behind many flowers and plants that would make anyone look at and appreciate gardens and flowers in ways they had never expected.)

Victoria’s journey from a sense of abandonment to her own happy ending creates an amazing novel that will keep its readers entranced from the first word to the last, with the meanings of many popular flowers used carefully throughout the story to convey important subtle messages of love and pain. The bold characters that are introduced at crucial points in Victoria’s life are another strong asset to Diffenbaugh’s stunning first novel, as well as the many forms of love that are described throughout the book, from maternal love to romantic love.  The romantic scenes between Victoria and Grant, the man she eventually comes to love, are as beautiful and delicate as the flowers described, which is important in a novel that is based on a broken girl who must be handled with care in every respect, especially emotionally and mentally. 

The exploration Victoria makes to find herself is fragile yet courageous, a young girl whose most representative flower begins with Common Thistle, Misanthropy (Distrust of Mankind) but in the end turns into the Daffodils, New Beginnings, a small way of saying that it is never too late for self-discovery.

~Shelly-Beans

The Other Woman's House by Sophie Hannah

Genre: Psychological Thriller/Mystery

Date of Publication: June 26^th, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “Crazy doesn’t have to mean made up. Insanity’s as real as sanity.” (pg. 67)

Storyline: B

Pace of the Story: C

Characters: B+

Ending: B

Overall Grade: B-

Everywhere we go, we pass houses we admire from a distance.  Our admiration for these houses is usually a fleeting thought as soon as they are out of sight; but for some, like Connie Bowskill in Sophie Hannah’s The Other Woman’s House, houses represent more than living quarters and a place to call home.  For Connie, an obsession with a specific house drags her down a dark road of truth behind her troubled marriage with Christian “Kit” Bowskill and how her paranoia made her closer to the truth than she would ever believe.  The specific house she is obsessed with is 11 Bentley Grove in Cambridge, and after viewing a virtual tour of the home on a popular real estate website, she spots a sight that will forever be engraved into her mind:  a woman lying face-down  in the lounge in what appears to be her own blood, dead.  After waking Kit in a panic and making him watch the tour to confirm what she saw, he tells Connie that there is no murdered woman in the lounge.  To her amazement, the body is not there after viewing the tour again herself.  This befuddlement only adds to her obsession not only with the house but also in proving that she is not as crazy as she appears to be.

The journey as to who this mysterious murdered woman is, though, is not an easy one, for the way Sophie Hannah incorporates several different sub storylines to bring them together in the end takes away from the immediate draw of the murder case.  From the conversations between the three detectives trying to figure out Connie’s story as well as the descriptions of fellow characters troubles in their marriages made the story wane in intrigue and mystery but the wrapping up all the information about the house and the different connections the detectives come up with is very elaborate, very creative, but very confusing. 

It is evident as to what Hannah was trying to create, which was a well-rounded story of who Kit and Connie really were and their struggles in creating their perfect world, but there was too much detail and too many voices to have the psychological twists shine as if they were supposed to.  As to whom the woman is and how she ended up in such a predicament is surreal and unexpected; leaving the reader satisfied with the surprise but somewhat frustrated with how long it took to uncover the truth. After all is said and done, the ending is better than expected, unexpected at that; a small twist that is a nice facet to the story but does not bring forth any strong revelations, as Hannah may have originally intended. 

Although there are flaws in the pace of the story and the amount of perspectives used in the storytelling, The Other Woman’s House is a clever and original piece of writing. It is easy to connect to the main characters and believe in both of their arguments as to who is the crazy one, which will make this a page-turner for anyone who curious enough as to what secrets are hiding behind the doors of 11 Bentley Grove.

~Shelly-Beans