Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Travelling with Pomegranates - Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor


Travelling with Pomegranates - Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor (2009)

Seeing this one on blogland somewhere, I reserved it and had it in my hot little palms within a week. I am pleased to say that November is turning into a fine reading month, if only the weather would get better too. Still grey cool evenings are perfect for curling up on the bed with a book, and as television is only fit for 15 year olds at the moment, it seems only to be on for background noise. I would rather spend a couple of hours browsing blogs than watching tv, and very little holds my attention any more.

Sue Monk Kidd is the author of The Secret Life of Bees, a great book if you haven't read it. In this book she travels to Greece first, with her daughter Ann, and each takes a chapter to describe their experiences. More than just a travel book, it explores many different experiences, aging, depression, family life, relationships and love. Ann describes her journey from college student to choosing to become a writer, while Sue is able to pinpoint many of the experiences that shape her wonderful novel. The many experiences with bees, the virgin Mary and Black Madonnas.

So it is a 4/5 for this small book, that made me want to pack my bags and head to Greece for my own adventure.

2 comments:

Pia K said...

seems like a good read, and certainly with a promising cover. admittedly i haven't read anything by neither of these ladies. i will have to mend that flaw i think:)

Bernice L. McFadden said...

Dear Book Lover:



You may not know me, or my novels, and not because I am lacking in talent and credentials; in fact I have already published a number of books with major publishing houses and have been reviewed by national newspapers and well-respected literary journals, and have received critical acclaim and awards for my efforts. My work has been hailed as vivid, thought provoking and brilliant. I have been compared to Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Gloria Naylor.

My first novel SUGAR was published in 2000 to critical acclaim.

On Jan 9th, 2010 it will celebrate its 10th anniversary and in order to commemorate this milestone I am campaigning to sell 10,000 copies between now and that date.



“Bernice L. McFadden's first novel begins with the brief, poetic description of a crime so startling that the reader is helplessly drawn in, as if a bright red door stood ajar on a bleak and forbidding house. Pearl Taylor's daughter, Jude, has been found murdered and mutilated near a field at the edge of town. "The murder had white man written all over it," writes McFadden. "But no one would say it above a whisper. It was 1940. It was Bigelow, Arkansas. It was a black child. Need any more be said?" In the years that follow, Pearl catches sight of Jude in so many strangers that when Sugar Lacey comes to town and sets up her unwholesome "business" in the house next door, she doesn't know whether to believe what she sees in Sugar's face: a striking similarity to Jude, dead 15 years. In her sedate but supple prose--rising at times to a light, unforced lyricism in the description of landscape or character--the author perfectly renders the closed and protective society of a small Southern town, the superstitions, gossip, and prying.”



If you enjoyed Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees or Kathryn Stocketts’ The Help – then prepare to fall in love with Sugar!



www.bernicemcfadden.com
www.firstborngirl.blogspot.com