Just finished Poser by Claire Dederer, am in the middle of Faith Club by Suzanne Oliver, and just today started my next Anne LeClaire novel, with the goal of having read all of her books before I take her workshop in March.
Faith Club is awesomely enlightening. It is about three women of three faiths coming together to write a children’s book, bringing together the common beliefs of their three faiths – Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. It’s written in such a personal narrative of their conversations you actually feel your sitting in the room with them. The women start out thinking they are beyond the reproach of prejudice, they are rational, educated and can intelligently discuss their individual faiths. They are surprised at the direction their conversations take them, and are even more surprised at what these meetings reveal about them. Although I’m only half way through the book and the project has almost been thwarted twice, I am anxious to see how it will end – will it end in a children’s picture book showing our children we can coexist in acceptance of faiths different than our own? A must read in this day and age when all war seems to be rooted in religion.
The Anne LeClaire book I just downloaded today is called Entering Normal and is about the pain of losing a child. So far the anguish the parents are going through after losing their 16 year old son in a horrific car accident five years ago is heart wrenching. Ned and Rose do not share the pain and suffer separately in a lonely house, when 20 year old single mom, Opal, moves in next-door with her five year old son. Will the crossing of their lives help one another or push each one deeper into their individual journeys? I can’t wait to find out.
And so, as another day goes by, I now have 77 books in my Kindle on my iPhone, and…I have written.
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