Alice Sebold--The Almost Moon

I've read both of Alice Sebold's other books and truly enjoyed them. A day later and I'm still not sure what I thought about this one. A daughter, Helen, in her late forties, her mentally ill mother and her deceased father. It was very interesting to read about how Helen grew up in what was a very difficult life, the mother was extremely mentally ill and was agoraphobic, not leaving the house for years at a time. I think the most interesting part to me was the affect that this mother had on the life of her fully grown daughter, Helen, and that even after she was married with children, she felt the need to protect her mother and chose to return home. Clearly the most shocking part of the book happened within the first chapter, when Helen killed her mother. It wasn't premeditated but something that almost just kind of happened. The worst part almost wasn't the actual killing of her mother but the hours that ensued after. I felt that I had just really gotten into the book towards the end and thus was very disappointed when it ended in what I felt was a very unsatisfying way. I wish there had been more of a conclusion but then again, my imagination can always make up some pretty imaginative ways to end the story!

Sadia Shepard--The Girl From Foreign

I picked this book up at the library and immediately was drawn into the world that Sadia spun. The story tells the real tale of her grandmother, who was born of the Bene Israel Jewish community in India, a community that I've heard some about in recent years. Unfortunately I didn't know a lot of information about the group or even what had become of them in more recent times. It was very interested to read about the conflict that Sadia felt, having all these different religious beliefs in one household. While it seemed at first, that Nana didn't really bring a lot of the Jewish faith into the household, as Sadia explored more and more throughout India, she realized that many of the things that her grandmother had done while she was a child were really Jewish traditions and not the traditions of her Muslim grandfather. I can only imagine the pain that Rachel Jacobs/Rahat Siddiqi felt trying to navigate the world through such different lenses. I wish that more of her secrets and world could have been shared before she'd died and I would have loved to hear how she felt about her religions and how she felt of the increasingly more religiousness of Pakistan since she left.