Inside out

Inside out By:Terry Treuman

Really great book.It is about a young adolescent who is a schizophrenic.You see the world through his eyes.The world in his eye is hurtful and confusing.He is never sure what is real and what is not.

When two teenage brothers attempt to hold up a Spokane coffee shop where Zach, 16, is waiting for his mother to bring his antipsychotic meds, he is among those held hostage. Thus begins this slender, but harrowing novel that depicts the standoff between the desperate pair and the police outside-all narrated by Zach, who is driven by impulsive outbursts, hateful voices in his head, and difficulty with processing reality. Chapters open with a brief passage that illuminates the history of his illness and suicide attempt, and interventions by his mother and psychiatrist. A phone call from the police to the robbers results in freedom for the others, but Zach, now overdue for his medicine, agrees to remain hostage. An odd bonding ensues among the troubled teens, all of whom are portrayed sympathetically. With no ammunition in their guns, the brothers are basically decent boys, scared and worried about their single mother's unemployment and cancer. Tension builds when one of them is wounded by a stray police bullet. They surrender, and Zach is reunited with his mother, his meds, and the simple comfort of a maple bar he had craved. A stark news article three months later imparts word that the unexpected hero of the crisis has committed suicide, the victim of his tragic illness. Trueman uses Zach's narration to challenge readers to feel the confusion and dark struggle of schizophrenia. The effect is disturbing, if somewhat didactic.

Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf

Take a side road and Holt County, Colorado to get a glimpse into the richness of the people who live there. In this book we follow the life of Jack Burdette as he goes from the town hero to the most hated person in town. See how his actions affect the various people in his life as he rushes toward what he wants out of life.

This novel delivers a powerful story that had me enthralled to the end. Though I found the ending disappointing and kind of heart wrenching. I enjoyed the various story lines that flowed with in the pages and felt a true connection with the narrator. I would recommend this book for those who love a small slice of life with their coffee at reading time. :)

Review by Tesse aka blissful2beme

Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf

Every tale has two sides and what you see may not be the reality of what really happened. Go back in time and follow the story of Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough and discover why she is in the hospital facing murder charges. Discover the roads that she traveled to become what she is and hear the story from the boy who loved her with all his heart.


I personally love Ken Haruf's books. I first read Plainsongs last month and had to mooch the rest of his books and I must say this one touched me as much as plainsongs did. It made me cry by the end and left me wishing for more. I give it rave reviews and recommend it for anyone who likes small town stories and insight into human nature.

Review by Tesse aka blissful2beme

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell was his debut novel in published in 1999 and so over shadowed by his second book Cloud Atlas that I had no idea that he had written an earlier book. We start the story in Japan in the aftermath of the cult subway poisoning and see these events from the perspective of the cult killer. We then move through nine disparate but interconnected tales exploring notions of community, coincidence, causality, catastrophe and fate.

Each episode is related in the first person, and set in a different international locale.

The gripping first story introduces Keisuke Tanaka, aka Quasar, a fanatical Japanese doomsday cultist who's on the lam in Okinawa after completing a successful gas attack in a Tokyo subway. The links between Quasar and the novel's next narrator, Satoru Sonada, a teenage jazz aficionado, are tenuous at first. Both are denizens of Tokyo; both tend toward nearly monomaniacal obsessiveness; both went to the same school (albeit at different times) and shared a common teacher, the crass Mr. Ikeda.

Other performers include a corrupt but (literally) haunted Hong Kong lawyer; an unnamed, time-battered Chinese tea-shop proprietress; a nomadic, disembodied intelligence on a voyage of self-discovery through Mongolia; a seductive and wily Russian art thief; a London-based musician, ghost-writer and ne'er-do-well; a brilliant but imperilled Irish physicist; and a loud-mouthed late-night radio-show host who unwittingly brushes with a global cyber-catastrophe.

As the plot progresses, however, the connections between narrators become more complex, richly imaginative and thematically suggestive. A pattern emerges in which chance events ripple around the world and through time to end in ways that one of the characters had always hoped for.

The prose is clear and the shift in genres acts as the motor to drive you through the story in the place of more traditional character or plot development.

I would highly recommend this book not as the herald of one yet to come but a good read in its own right.