more than letters on a line today

    Sea of Tranquility Emily St. John Mandel 4.5 stars         In support of a Canadian author, I grabbed this book. Emily St. John Mandel weaves the possibility of sci/fi (living on the moon) with futuristic realism (property prices decline there too) and makes it magical. Any one who can suspend belief and appreciate the possibility of time travel, human characters in different centuries all connected with the most tender of words must read this book. I loved the description of Victoria, British Columbia (1912): It’s a far distant simulation(!) of England, a watercolour superimposed unconvincingly on the landscape. Describing the wilderness/forest (the scene grabber for it’s future importance) - …this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies…it hasn’t even noticed him. We learn that Time is a continuum, so are all these wonderful characters real, are they merely pieces of each other one d...

  The Many Daughters of Afong Moy Jamie Ford 5 Stars Pub Date Aug 2, 2022 I'm giving this one 5 stars but I'd give more if I could.   I received an early copy for my review of this phenomenal study of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance from Jamie Ford. Ford provides a valuable introduction about the passing down of emotional pain and scars that should not be missed. In his poetic words, he gets into the minds and hearts of each generation of women (1834-2086), something that could prove challenging as a male writer. But Ford does not disappoint. “She fantasized about staring up at the sky as she plummeted through the air, fistfuls of poetry drifting from her fingertips.” Afong Moy is the first Chinese woman in the Western World (fact) in 1834. She is at the starting line of each of the stories of the women who follow, each dealing with a crisis of learning to survive in their own era. In each generation we see the struggle to make it thro...

  The Matchmaker's Gift Lynda Cohen Loigman 4 stars  Pub date Sept 2022     Sara has a gift, she 'sees' the connection between those meant to be together. Her granddaughter, who we meet in 1994, discovers the grandmother's secrets in the journals left to her and fights hard initially to deny her own skills in matters of the heart. This is a lovely, heart-reaching story of the drawing together of beloveds. Sara in 1912 is confronted by the shatken, the traditional male matchmakers, who believe that a single woman could not/should not be a matchmaker. Decades later, Abby fights against the belief of true love as a divorce lawyer. However, her bond to her grandmother gives her the faith to put kindness and humility first for a non-conventional meeting of partners and is told with humour and insight. 'The heart is big enough to hold both grief and love.' Sara and Abby, decades apart must be brave enough to deal with current thinking and be true to themselves. Differ...