Books - Review

Dolores has a difficult childhood, and gets very fat from spending all her time sitting in front of the TV eating. Her childhood is traumatic, and she goes into therapy, and comes out a changed woman, in size anyway.

Great! Read it all in one day just about, although I was ill, so didn't have much else to do. Quite moving, and gave a good sense of time passing as Dolores grew up with Nixon, Woodstock, the Beatles, and then AIDS at the end.

Dominick, one of two identical twins suffers a difficult childhood with an unsympathetic and sometomes vicious stepfather. Then his twin brother gets diagnosed as a paranoid scizophrenic and cuts his own hand off in a public library as an anti Gulf War gesture. Then his baby daughter dies aged three weeks. Then his wife divorces him 'cos he got a vasectomy without telling her. Then his new girlfriend gets pregnant by her bisexual, HIV positive lover. Nothing seems to go right, but he reads his grandfather's autobiographical papers, has some therapy and it all turns out ok eventually.

This was very enjoyable, if a little bit long (850 pages). Good characters, and in spite of the improbably long list of sad events above, the plot was all quite believable.

Columbine teacher is away burying his aunt when the student killers run wild in the school library, but his school-nurse wife has to hide and is lucky to escape. She gets PTSD, he struggles with his ancient family history. She gets addicted to tranquilisers and kills a boy with the car - and ends up in the prison his great-grandmother founded.

Long, rambling, and the ancient history bits were particularly dull and uninspiring. Good in parts.

Corby is borderline alcoholic and has lost his job. His wife supports the family with her teaching job, and he takes on the role of stay at home dad to the two young twins, aged about two. Half-heartedly looking for work and becoming more dependent on tranquilisers and booze, one day Corby is responsible for a terrible accident in the driveway of the home. Sentenced to three years in prison Corby has to learn to survive and see if he can turn his life around...

Quite a good story, although it seemed to drag on a bit and I didn't quite believe the bit near the end where he messed up getting his early parole.