The Mad Wife

Fiction by Megan Church

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book begins with 1950's housewife Lulu Mayfield in a mental hospital, and then goes back in time to show how she got there. 

Honestly, it was almost too upsetting for me to read at times. (Interestingly, the author's note at the beginning states that the reader might want to take a break from the novel if the subject matter is too triggering. Well, it was, and I did.) It is all too easy for me to imagine myself in the place of  the overwhelmed Lulu.

It is a well-written story with believable characters and I did like the ending, but it was a difficult read.

The One in a Million Boy

 Fiction by Monica Wood

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this story, a man named Quinn goes to help 104-year-old Ona Viktus with her yardwork. He is going in place of his eleven-year-old son, who had been assigned to work for Ona as a Boy Scout project. Ona has formed quite a bond with the boy and is disappointed. "He couldn't make it," Quinn says, because he cannot bear to tell her the truth. 

The truth is that the boy is dead. Quinn is tying to repay his son's debt to Ona, and also to somehow get to know something about the boy through the old woman the child had bonded with. Quinn feels he never really knew his son and regrets it. Meanwhile, the boy's mother Belle (Quinn's ex-wife) is drowning in grief, and Quinn wants to find a way to help her.

This story had wonderful characters that were very believable and likeable, but it was sad.  

The Rest of Her Life

 Fiction by Laura Moriarty

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this book, 18-year-old Kara accidentally hits a pedestrian on her way home from the last day of her senior year of high school. The victim, a girl named Bethany who is two years behind Kara at the same school, is killed instantly. Also instantly, Kara's life is forever changed.

The story is told from the perspective of Kara's mother Leigh, and the focus is on the relationships in the family, and the relationships between the family and the small town they live in. It's a very good character story that gives the reader a lot to think about.

I also read by this author: The Chaperone

Nobody's Girl

Subtitled: a Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Nonfiction by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

https://www.audible.com

Oh my goodness. This was wrenching and way, WAY too sad. I couldn't finish listening.

The Snakes

 Fiction by Sadie Jones

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Bea Adamson and her husband Dan are a young married couple who decide to leave their home in England for a few months to travel in Europe, subletting their flat and using their small savings. The plan is for Bea (who loves her job) to take a leave of absence and for Dan (who loathes his job) to quit and find a new job when they return. 

But first they stop in France to see the hotel that Bea's brother Alex is running, and right away there is a problem. The hotel is still "under renovation," and Alex is clearly incapable of managing it. It's literally just a property that Alex's father has purchased to keep Alex occupied. And so Dan begins to realize the extent of his wife's family's wealth: they are the kind of rich people who can buy a hotel in France for their son to play around with. 

The fact of the Adamson's extreme wealth boggles Dan's mind and puts Bea on the defensive. She has always refused to accept any money from her father, whom she sees at best as corrupt (and at worst as a criminal), and maintains that her family's financial status has nothing to do with herself and Dan. Still the fact that the money exists begins to drive a wedge between the two of them. And then tragedy strikes.

This was an interesting story with great characters that gives the reader a lot to think about. The ending was terrible, however.

The Nickel Boys

 Fiction by Colson Whitehead

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book is a fictionalized account based on a real historical place: a juvenile detention facility in Mariana Florida called a "school for boys." This was a terrible place that remained open for over a hundred years for both white and colored boys, separately housed and very badly treated. Interestingly, I read another book on this subject recently, The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. That book involved the ghosts of dead boys telling the story, while this one  took a more realistic approach.

At the beginning of the story, a group of students from a Florida are digging up an archeological site on the grounds of the old school where hundreds of dead boys were apparently buried. The students are also gathering the stories of the boys who survived the place and are now old men.

This was a good story but very sad. It was well written but I can't say it was enjoyable.

I also read by this author: The Underground Railroad

A Mouthful of Air

 Fiction by Amy Koppelman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of his story, Julie Davis is a pretty young mother of an almost-one-year-old son. She's going about her day in 1997 New York City, trying to tell herself that everything is okay. The problem is, she's just recently emerged from a private mental hospital after a serious suicide attempt a month ago, and she is really REALLY not okay. Her mental state will not improve when she visits the gynecologist the next day and discovers she is pregnant again.

This novel is an affecting and believable portrait of a woman suffering from severe depression. It's hard to read. There was a movie starring Amanda Seyfried, and I would imagine that watching her beautiful face experiencing this much emotional pain would be particularly sad.

It's well written but way too despondently bleak. And the ending is not happy either...

A Little Pinprick

 Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Paige Dearth

https://www.amazon.com

This was a sad story about a baby born addicted to heroin and raised by her terrible junkie parents, while  no social worker intervenes. It's actually the beginning of a series.

I kept reading and waiting for this kid to catch a break, but the story stayed bleak and terrible. I finished the book but don't want to read any more about this poor kid.

I also read recently on Amazon Prime Kindle: Ask For Andrea

Find Layla

 Fiction by Meg Eilson 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Layla is fourteen years old and lives in serious poverty with a supremely indifferent mother and a needy six-year-old brother. She is super smart and gets good grades almost without effort, but most of her energy is spent taking care of her baby brother and simply surviving. The reader knows this situation is unsustainable and has to blow up, but Layla is determined to keep going no matter what.

The character of Layla was heart-breakingly believable, and this whole story was amazingly well-written. The book was engrossing but not necessarily enjoyable. It was awfully bleak and sad. I really wanted things to work out better than they did....

 

Funerals for Horses

 Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde 

https://www.amazon.com

In this book, Ella Ginsburg is searching for her brother Simon, who disappeared months ago, leaving behind his car, clothes and wallet. Everyone is pretty sure he's dead, including Simon's wife, but Ella can't accept that.

Ella sets out on this doomed journey, walking without proper shoes or clothes because "that's how Simon did it." She seems to succumb to madness while reliving terrible memories from her and Simon's childhood. There is a resolution at the end but almost the whole story is quite awful.

This is the first novel written by Catherine Ryan Hyde, and it's not nearly as good as her later efforts.

I also read recently by this author: Worthy

Indian Horse

 Fiction by Richard Wagamese

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Saul Indian Horse was born in the wilds of northern Ontario, a member of the Ojibway tribe. But in the 1940's through the early 1960's, the Canadian government sanctioned institutionalization of native children like Saul, forcibly removing them from their families and placing them in residential schools to "civilize" them. So poor Saul becomes a victim of this terrible system and ends up a homeless alcoholic in adulthood.

In this story, Saul traces his history to try to heal himself. It's a really sad book.

All My Puny Sorrows

 Fiction by Miriam Toews

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Yolandi and Elfrieda are sisters who grew up as Canadian Mennonites and are still close as adults. However, they are very different. 

Elfrieda, the older sister, is a successful concert pianist with a loving husband and beautiful apartment in Winnipeg. Yolandi is a broke divorcee with two kids by two different dads and a crappy apartment in Toronto. But the biggest problem the sisters face is the fact that Elfrieda keeps trying to kill herself.

This was a hard book for me to read, because I could not see it ever ending well. Elf was just so despairing. Nothing anyone said seemed to make her want to live. The characters were so realistic I could feel both sisters' sorrow. (Not to mention their mother!)

I can't say how this book ended of course (I have rules about that), but it's not really a sad ending. The interesting thing is how little actual life circumstances seemed to affect these women's natural optimism or pessimism. This book definitely made me think.

Inside the O'Brien's

Fiction by Lisa Genova.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book is by the author of Still Alice, the story about the woman with early-onset Alzheimer's disease that was recently made into a Julianne Moore movie. I haven't read that book --in fact, this is the first book by this author I have read-- but I'd imagine it to be pretty similar to this one, judging from the movie. (I don't know if all of Lisa Genova's books are like this. Does she start out by wondering what sort of debilitating disease with which to doom her characters, and then begin writing? Sounds like fun, right?)

Inside the O'Brien's also focuses on a character facing a terrible diagnosis; this time it is Huntington's Disease. (That's not a spoiler, by the way; it's obvious from page one what's happening.) The really sad part is that this disorder is inherited, and so the whole family is directly affected.

Obviously this is not book for you if you are looking for a happy story, but it is amazingly readable and engrossing. It makes you think.

The Guest Room

Fiction by Chris Bohjalian.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book was really difficult to read at times, but what a story! It begins with a bachelor party that escalates badly, and turns into an emotionally wrenching page-turner.

Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath

Nonfiction by Anne Stevenson.


Image from www.goodreads.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a hard book to read. I'm interested in Sylvia Plath's life and death, and that's why I picked it up, but it seems that the story of a woman who struggled with a dark mental illness and eventually killed herself (but produced great art!) doesn't make for light and pleasant reading. Surprise, surprise.

Still, it seemed to me like this was a pretty honest portrait of a real woman with real problems who was also an artist. This author does not put her subject on a pedestal, and in the reviews I read, this made a lot of people mad. Sylvia Plath has become a feminist icon, but the truth is she was a person first. I liked how this author presented her realistically.

However, the book was just not enjoyable. Intellectually a great read, it dragged me down emotionally so badly I couldn't read the whole thing.

Before I Go

Fiction by Colleen Oakley.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com

Daisy is a young woman who beat breast cancer a few years ago. This is story is about what she does when it comes back.