Aurelie Sheehan

Winona Bartlett is a wannabe film-maker living in New York City. Although she doesn't own a camera, she spends lots of time imagining her first film, to be called "The Anxiety of Everyday Objects," a plotless piece that will illustrate the ways in which we continually misperceive the world around us, for example when we misread a sign that says "Turn ahead" as "Turn ahead." Yet while Winona's artistic aspirations run to the philosophical and ponderous, her day-to-day life is, well, predictably boring. She works as a secretary in a small law firm where she obsessed about making coffee that is just the right strength for her boss, she lives alone with her cat Fruit Bat, she is bossed around by her self-centered older sister, and she dates a series of unsuitable men. Things start to change when her firm hires Sandy Spires, a mysterious, sophisticated blind lawyer to help with a lawsuit they're working on. Sandy shakes up the firm, but in the end, and frankly as any even somewhat astute reader could have guessed--Sandy turns out not to be who she seems, and the revelation of this leads to a series of events that set Winona on a much more promising course. The book ends with the kind of explain-it-all scene one sees in TV detective shows, as where Monk exclaims "Here's what happened."

Meh!… (mere)

Story of two girls from wealthy Weston, Connecticut in 1976. Allison is 12, has scoliosis, wears a back brace 23 hours a day, and has just moved to Weston with her painter mom and poet/professor dad. Luckily she has her horse Jazz to keep her grounded. Kate is 12, rich, popular, and doesn't care much about anything except her horse Peach. The two girls find a connection in their love of riding, and become inseparable as girls often do. But Allison's back is not getting better, her parents start falling apart and doing stupid things--but Kate's family is much, much worse and the pain of it might just turn out to be too much to take. Well written, poignant, disturbing, and sad. A pretty great book.… (mere)