Neshama’s Choices for November 25

The titles and links below will direct you to print copies when available.  Click on the title to see all available formats, including recorded versions and eBooks. 

You can learn more about using eBooks and eAudiobooks on our blog, and contact us if you need assistance. *Restrictions to using Hoopla apply based on your home address. 

The Foundling by Ann Leary

The Nettleton Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age is run by Dr. Agnes Vogel, an esteemed psychiatrist. It’s 1927 and eugenics has become a hot topic. Young Mary, who was brought up in an institution for foundlings, gets the opportunity to work there and is thrilled with the possibility for advancement. She becomes Dr. Vogel’s personal secretary but soon discovers disturbing activities both within the village and with the ways Dr. Vogel has found to fund it. Mary’s initial naïveté takes a while to crumble but when it does, she goes into action to free an inmate whom she knew from the foundling home. Her liaison with an investigative journalist helps. I encountered this book on CD and the actor does a fabulous job creating the sociopathic Dr. Vogel’s soothing, seductive yet steely voice.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy, the unprepossessing, successful writer who appears in many of Strout’s novels, is visiting Olive (ditto) to tell her stories of “unremarkable” people. Olive, old, grumpy, and suspicious as is her wont, gets hooked. Many of these stories involve Bob (ditto), a lawyer who has an ongoing crush on Olive. But Lucy’s currently living with her ex, William (Covid brought about this arrangement) and Bob is married to a local minister, Margaret. Bob takes on what initially seems like a hopeless case, but of course, there are surprising layers and he goes above and beyond when his client sinks into paralyzing depression. At first, when I was sorting out all these strands, I thought here we are again and it seemed a little flat. But Strout is a stealth writer, deceptively simple, and I got thoroughly caught up in all these not-so-not-unremarkable-after-all stories and finished the book with a contented sigh.

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

The title telegraphs the theme of the book— it’s a morality play of sorts. Clio, with postpartum depression, wishes her baby would disappear and it actually happens when her mother Edith takes the baby shopping. A moment’s inattention and someone snatches the kid and disappears. Two decades later Edith is now miserable in the old people’s home where Clio has stuck her. She has one ally there, a young worker, Patience, who becomes a friend. We also get to know Frankie, who lives on a narrowboat on the Thames, is a prison librarian, and is estranged from her 20-year-old daughter. Well, they’re all connected, of course, and we gradually find out how and why people with the best intentions can go very, very wrong. In the end, there are revelations and reconciliations that somewhat counterbalance years of hurt and confusion. One fascinating wrinkle: Patience is skilled in the art of paper cuts: with lots of snipping, an intricate scene appears.

I Can Fix This by Kristina Kuzmic

Subtitled:  And Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child. The author, who gives very well-received talks on family relationships, faced a terrifying challenge when her adolescent son Luka started to change. Angry, withdrawn, failing in school, turning to drugs and alcohol, with suicidal ideation—a mother’s nightmare. All the knowledge she’d been accruing and sharing came to naught. This incredibly candid book reveals everything that Kuzmic tried, how she failed, and how a deep shift in attitude brought about healing. I follow a 12-step program and found many parallels in this book to the truths I’ve been graced to learn there.