The last pages of 2006

Over the last two weeks I have read loads, partly due to it being Christmas (and what nicer way to spend the time?) and partly due to me having been even more under the weather than usual, so I had lots of time to read in.

First up was A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. I was amazed to read that Miriam was brought up Mennonite, a fact I hadn't grasped when I read A Boy of Good Breeding. Although told from the angle of the feisty, teenage daughter of a disfunctional family, it was still brilliant and would certainly make a good read for those much younger than me too. The insight into Mennonite customs was a revelation.

Next and in a similar vein was The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, plucked from my mother's bookcase. Previously unread, she had received it as a freebie with a magazine and deemed the typeface to small to look at. Exploring racial tensions in South Carolina in the 1960s this too was a learning curve for me. I can't believe those things still happened in my lifetime. Time for a history lesson methinks. The teenager in trouble in this work was also trying to find out why her mother had left her but this time the ending was not so inevitable.

A third troubled teen struck out in the next book I read, Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. Again the protagonist had secrets which were not so secret as she believed but it took the whole book to find that out. A gripping read but somehow I didn't enjoy it so much as Between, Georgia. Maybe because the themes of all these were vaguely similar.

A complete change of scene then and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. This was a much more adult theme but almost cringemaking in it's tale of a girl whose sex-life was spread over the local newspaper by her journalist ex. I have to say I spotted the boyfriend to be as soon as he was introduced and was waiting to see when they would get together. The ending, too, was a bit twee with Cannie's salvation in the new bloke, a new baby and finding out that 'thin' wasn't neccessarily 'happy'. Not like real life at all.

Lastly was Nice Girls Do It by Sarah Duncan, the only one of my Christmas reads to be set in the UK. This was a simple sort of no-brainer, just right for passing fluey hours in bed. The sub-title Sex, Lies and Gardening had taken my eye but really there wasn't much gardening at all, more a tale of historical investigation with a twist. Essentially a classic tale of woman has flash boyfriend with everything and gives him up for the handsome stranger who appears to have nothing. Just like eating candyfloss.

Which I suppose was as good a way as any to end the festive season.