Wish I Were Here

An adventurous, open-hearted romcom about an exacting mathematician and a quirky, fun-loving doorman who set out on a journey of self-discovery.

Wish I Were Here by Melissa Wiesner is an adventurous and open-hearted romantic comedy about a precise and exacting mathematician whose world is turned upside-down in a case of missing identity. 

Catherine Lipton of Pittsburgh, Penn. is thrilled when she’s offered a university math professorship. However, when the college requests original documents for her employment file, the single, 29-year-old learns she doesn’t exist. Her birth certificate and Social Security information aren’t even found in any databases. This forces Catherine to find a way to substantiate her existence.

Catherine seeks the help of her career-averse, bohemian father, who has lived intent on pursuing his dreams of clown performing—juggling, his specialty. As a single dad who raised Catherine--Catherine’s mother walked out on them--he refuses to help Catherine’s search for her mother who might retain the original documents needed for Catherine’s dream job. Desperate, Catherine accepts help offered by Luca Morelli, the handsome, heavily tattooed, artsy doorman who oversees her apartment building, which is filled with fun-loving octogenarians. The somewhat sinister connections offered by Luca and those in his orbit steep Catherine in unexpected complications, while offering readers amusingly plotted twists and turns. 

 

Female protagonists whose lives comedically derail, forcing them to change, are hallmarks of Wiesner’s (The Second Chance Year) cleverly inventive romcoms. In Wish I Were Here, she builds on this foundation with great charm and wit.

 

Wish I Were Here by Melissa Wiesner

Forever, $17.99 paperback, 9781538741948, 368 pages

Publication Date: October 15, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (October 18, 2024), link HERE 

The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise

A wildly fun road trip adventure about an unpredictable octogenarian, with a secret past, who goes on the lam with her 20something caretaker.

Colleen Oakley takes readers on an off-beat, whirlwind road trip adventure--with an underlying serious message--in The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise.

 

Louise Constance Wilt is an unpredictable, whip-smart, Atlanta, Georgia native. With the 84-year-old widow hobbling around on a bum hip, her children, who live hours away, decide it’s time for their mother to have some live-in help. Enter floundering, 21-year-old, Tanner Quimby, whose promising college sports scholarship--and dreams of playing soccer professionally--are sidelined by a very badly broken leg. The arrangement would appear a win-win for the two injured women. However, after some initial, mutual resistance--and Tanner attuned to some dubious red flags in Louise’s behavior--the duo set off on an impulsive road trip. When Louise’s daughter files a missing persons’ report, the family discovers that Louise has actually been living under an alias for years—on an FBI watchlist involving a notorious jewel heist from Boston in the 1970s. Could this be true? And does this have anything to do with Louise and Tanner suddenly going on the lam?

 

Well-structured elements of mystery and suspense infuse this enjoyable friendship story about lives well-lived—however burdened by challenges and questionable choices. A lively plot, off-beat characters and surprising twists bring levity to darker themes that probe issues of feminism and aging. Oakley’s storytelling (The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, You Were There Too) is first rate. Readers will eagerly hop aboard this wildly fun, greatly entertaining ride.

The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise by Colleen Oakley

Berkley (Penguin), $27.00 hardcover, 9780593200803, 352 pages

Publishing Date: March 28, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 24, 2023), link HERE

Cat Brushing

Deeply resonant, eloquently rendered short stories about women who change and grow with enlightenment amidst the twilight of their lives.

Octogenarian Jane Campbell may be “new” to the publishing industry, but her first book, Cat Brushing, is refreshingly accomplished. The thirteen exquisitely drawn short stories in the collection are woven with wit and bold enlightenment. Each meticulously crafted gem focuses on the lives of aging women who grapple with their shrinking places in the world while coming to terms with feelings and failings, choices and losses.

 

Longing, need and sensuality surprise: A woman who “never put a foot over the line,” lives out her days in a care facility. Having grown distant from her self-interested adult children, the woman experiences an unexpected awakening amidst the gentle touch of her attentive manicurist. A similar theme infuses the tender story of one writerly woman’s life and a sense of loneliness that persists throughout marriages, affairs and motherhood. When she settles alone in a small village later ravaged by a violent storm, she takes in a displaced neighbor whose house is destroyed. The two disparate souls form a bond deeper than either could have imagined.

 

Reflective pleasures abound in the title story, where a woman “judged too old to live alone,” moves in with her son and his younger wife. Feeling “dispossessed… of control and elegance,” the woman and her Siamese cat become fellow inmates. The cat arouses charms and wiles the woman once had in abundance—maybe all is not lost?

 

Many stories deal with women forced to give up rights, respect and desires: An older woman takes a fall that sets in motion a series of events that drag her back to the past and a questionable issue of adoption. A simple lunch resurrects a memory of parental love that suddenly transforms, through the prism of retrospect, into control. A chance meeting on a train depicts the effect of consequential choices. Revenge tastes sweet when an unassuming neighbor privy to a long-suffering, powerless wife and her ogre husband cleverly settles a score.

Aspects of regret, mourning, fantasies, and lost love infuse these eloquently rendered, skillfully plotted stories that pack a wallop. “Ageing is often represented as an accumulation, of disease, of discomforts, of wrinkles,” says the narrator of the title story. However, in these wholly original, late-in-life stories crafted by Jane Campbell, the limitations incurred by aging ultimately become surprising sources of wisdom and empowered liberation.

 

Cat Brushing by Jane Campbell

Grove Press/Grove Atlantic, $26.00 hardcover, 256 pages, 9780802160027

Publication Date: August 9, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE

 

NOTE: To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (June 20, 2022 ), link HERE

 

NOTE: To read a condensed version of this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 12, 2022), link HERE

The Story of Arthur Truluv

An 85-year-old childless widower, a misfit 18-year-old girl  and a never-married 83-year-old woman form a life-changing friendship.

In The Story of Arthur Truluv, Elizabeth Berg (The Dream Lover) focuses on contrasting characters whose lives share common threads of loneliness and isolation: Arthur Moses is an 85-year-old grieving the loss of his beloved wife, Nola Corrine. A retired parks groundskeeper and an amateur gardener, he rides a bus everyday to the cemetery and eats his brown bag lunch graveside with Nola. There, he takes comfort in cleverly conjuring visions of the dead in surrounding, underground graves--"Nola's neighbors"--and he imagines the lives they might have lived. The simple gesture of a hand wave brings Maddy Harris--an 18-year-old with a nose ring, who also finds graveyards comforting--into Arthur's life.

Maddy calls the dead "her people," as her mother died in a car crash two weeks after Maddy was born. The tragedy and its aftermath drove a wedge between her and her father, who, tormented by his own grief, emotionally rejected his daughter and ultimately shaped her into a loner. When forlorn Maddy meets compassionate Arthur, their shared affinity for the dead sparks an unlikely friendship. She nicknames him "Truluv" because he speaks with glowing devotion for his late wife. Gradually added to the mix is Lucille, Arthur's meddlesome, 83-year-old, never married next-door neighbor, who faces a shattering loss of her own.

Berg's vivid characters may be vastly different in age, worldview and temperament, but they express a universal need for love, acceptance, purpose and connection. Tender, colorful strokes of humor dot the landscape of this touching story that deepens with poignancy and profound insights into the perils and glories of the contemporary human condition.  

The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg

Penguin-Random House, $26.00 Hardcover,  9781400069903, 240 pages

Publication Date: November 21, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 24, 2017), link HERE

Dinner with Edward

A middle-aged writer and a 93-year-old widower, both facing changes, become friends through the satiating comfort of food.

Two lost souls bond over gourmet feasts in Dinner with Edward, a memoir by investigative journalist Isabel Vincent (Gilded Lily: Lily Safra). Isabel--a middle-aged newspaper reporter transplanted to New York City as her marriage comes undone--meets a dear friend for dinner. The friend's 95-year-old mother has recently died, and she fears her father, Edward, is giving up on life. She asks Isabel to check in on him occasionally, touting Edward's culinary prowess. Isabel's loneliness in a new city ultimately propels her to show up at Edward's apartment on Roosevelt Island, armed with a bottle of wine.

One meal turns into a weekly, culinary rendezvous where meticulous and debonair Edward, a self-trained cook, whips up savory and sweet feasts, paired perfectly with cocktails. "Edward was neither a snob nor an insufferable foodie. He just liked to do things properly." Over dinner, he conveys heartfelt details of his life, his creative pursuits and his enchanted marriage, ultimately becoming something of a teacher and protective father figure to Isabel. He offers wisdom and perspective as Isabel shares her adventures working for the New York Post, her crumbling marriage, difficulties in raising her daughter and her return to dating. 

Dinner with Edward emerges as a beautiful, passionate love story--wholly platonic--about two people whose lives are have undergone change, but who learn how to adapt and truly appreciate life again. Isabel Vincent's rich, perfectly paced narrative is served with as much wonder and gratitude as the deliciously conveyed indulgence of each satisfying, lingering meal. 

Dinner with Edward: A Story of Unexpected Friendship by Isabel Vincent
Algonquin Books, $23.99 Hardcover, 9781616204228, 224 pages
Publication Date: May 24, 2016
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 3, 2016), link HERE